


Defacement

by Cbear2470



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Brief/Vague Mentions of Non Consensual Sexual Situations, Codependency, Description of Varying Degrees of Disfiguration, Eventual Happy Ending, First Time, Forgiveness, Graphic Description of Corpses, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, John is Broken and I Promise to Fix Him, John is a Mess, M/M, Mental Anguish, One of those If-John-Was-"Dead"-Instead-Of-Sherlock-Fics, Post-Season/Series 01 AU, Redemption, Romance, Sherlock Gets It Wrong, Sherlock is a Mess, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, Vigilantism, also basically a crossover with every cheesy twisted and overdramatic spy film ever made, sort of a case fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:38:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5848963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cbear2470/pseuds/Cbear2470
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story, ultimately, about timing. </p><p>Sherlock and John's has always been absolute crap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It begins about a week after the events of The Great Game, everything after that point is a near complete departure.

“John,” Sherlock said from his perch on the armchair.

Perched was the best way to describe it, John thought, as he looked up at the other man from the medical journal he was reading. He was squatted with his feet on the seat of the chair, elbows resting on his knees, and his chin resting against his steepled fingers. He managed to look both like someone who was in a pose for meditation and like panther, albeit a gangly one, ready to pounce. But then John supposed that being anything but a contradiction at all times would be far too boring for Sherlock.

“Yeah,” John responded lazily, looking back down from Sherlock to his reading. There was a report on new advances in skin grafting. The advances were mostly cosmetic, nothing about the time it takes to heal, lowering the chances of graft-versus-host disease developing, or anything else that would seem more medically pertinent. But John knew that people, of course, did care about their looks, and skin grafts that looked more like there had never been a graft at all would mean a lot to burn victims, and the quality of life they would feel that they could have after their injury. John had to admit that if the scars he bore could have been healed so there were no traces of them, he’d be more than glad to not have to unearth unwanted memories every time he looked in the mirror.

But of course, even if the scars were gone, it wouldn't fix the underlying damage.

“John, are you listening to me?” Sherlock snapped, pulling John back out of the report.

“You’ve carried on for days without me around before,” John replied tersely.

“But John, this is important. And it involves you, although I don’t see why,” Sherlock’s voice trailed off and he seemed to retreat back into his mind, but John was now curious.

“What shouldn’t involve me?”

“Moriarty.” John felt his body turn to ice at the mention of the name. “I can’t understand why he took you,” Sherlock continued on. “I suppose it is the obvious choice, but it’s almost too obvious. Moriarty likes surprises, he likes twists and turns like he’s choreographing ice dancers rather than organizing a criminal network.”

“Ice dancing? Since when does anyone know anything about ice dancing, especially you?” John replied, choosing to ignore the more important bits of what Sherlock had said.

“Mrs. Hudson had me watch some with her ages ago, I don’t know why I haven’t deleted it,” Sherlock muttered. “But that is not the point, John!” Sherlock chose that moment to leap up from his chair and begin pacing. “Why did he choose you? Do you honestly think that you’re the most interesting person that he could have chosen?” Sherlock sounded exasperated, and John was growing to be rather upset as well. His temper had always been short, but since the incident it had been even shorter.

Being around Sherlock had frankly just become too difficult. 

“Well who do you think, dare I ask, would have been a more _interesting_ choice?” John slammed down the medical journal onto the table between them.

“I don’t know, John. That’s the point. It’s not something that I’m supposed to be able to know! I should have shown up and been completely flabbergasted at the perfection of it all, with a criminal like Moriarty. Instead, it was just you. Anyone would know to take you, John.”

John ground his teeth, the way Sherlock kept saying his name, almost like it was a curse word, was setting him on edge.

“Have you, perhaps, considered that there is no one else besides me, _Sherlock_?” John stood up and began to pace as Sherlock was. “You do realize that, don’t you? You don’t have friends, _Sherlock_ , besides me, or at least I thought but suddenly I’m not so sure. Why did he take anyone that day, the old woman, the child, they didn’t mean anything to you, did they? Maybe that’s what Moriarty was getting at when he chose me! Who should he have taken, anyway, _Sherlock_ , in your expert opinion? An enemy of yours perhaps? Or do you have some jilted lover from university that no one knows about but who you secretly harbor feelings for but broke up with anyway because you’re a stubborn arse who thinks he’s above things like love, but yet you expected Moriarty to somehow know about? What, _Sherlock_ , could have possibly been enough for you?”

John stopped pacing and turned to look back at Sherlock expectantly. Sherlock was standing still and staring back at him with wide, surprised eyes.

“We already know that I’m not enough for you, of course. That much has been made clear many times.” The words fell out of John’s mouth without him thinking. They seemed to be the only words that could have possibly filled the silence.

Sherlock took a hesitant step towards John and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

John shrugged the hand off. He hated when Sherlock did things like that. There was no part of Sherlock that would ever naturally try to comfort someone. It just wasn’t who Sherlock was. What he was doing instead was imitating, giving John something he thought he needed, that he thought would make him respond in the way that would be least inconvenient to himself. He was doing something he thought normal people did.

“You’re wrong,” Sherlock said. John couldn’t tell if Sherlock was doing that mind reading thing he sometimes did or if he was referring to the comments that John had actually made out loud, or a combination of both.

“Oh, of course I’m wrong, says the genius. Tell me something new!” John snarled and threw his arms up in the air. He was eager to break the stillness that had fallen over the room. It was far too serious, and he couldn’t bear that right now. It felt like it did when occasionally Sherlock was going to say something that was far too raw and actually mean it. Those moments were rare, and while John usually cherished them, he couldn’t handle one of them right now, not after everything that had just happened.

But Sherlock, rather annoyingly for the self-proclaimed master deductionist, didn’t seem to understand John’s queue to change the tone, or was ignoring it. But the implications of that latter possibility were even more horrifying.

“I just thought, John,” Sherlock’s voice was softer now, and John’s name on his lips now sent a shiver down John’s spine. “That Moriarty, for all he claims to be, would manage to know something I didn’t know. I know that I care for you, John, which something that I have been informed of enough times now that I acknowledged it as the truth a long time ago. But I imagined a mastermind like Moriarty would be able to come up with something a little less cliché than kidnapping a targets partner to upset them," Sherlock said gently with a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. 

John was reeling. Sherlock hadn’t said much, but it was certainly more than he’d ever said before. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. It wasn’t fair to either of them.

“I need to get some air,” John said quickly before turning and rushing out of the flat before Sherlock could say another word.

He found himself a few minutes later wandering through Regent’s park. It was a very grey day and had been raining on and off, so the park was quiet, besides a few stubborn joggers and dog walkers. He found dryer looking bench and sat down to try to think, but the thing that he needed to think about most hurt too much to even consider. What had happened with Moriarty was too much, it took everything in him to pretend to be as fine as he had been for Sherlock. But now it seemed like Sherlock was finally asking for something that John couldn’t give him. Not for the reasons that he’d used before, no, something much, much worse. But he couldn’t help but want it, still, none the less.

But wanting Sherlock was something that didn’t get thought about, because Sherlock wasn’t like that and John had no problem not being like that either. And now, after what had happened, it was imperative that he stay as far away from Sherlock as possible without raising suspicion. Over the past week since the incident with Moriarty, John had come up with excuses to not go with Sherlock out on as many cases as he could get away with. He’d spent most nights out with women, any woman that would have him, in order to get out of the flat.

He was also keeping himself very busy at the surgery, electing to cover all of the shifts of another doctor who had to go on maternity leave a bit earlier than originally planned. When he did spend time with Sherlock, it had been the times when Sherlock needed a sounding board and John could sit and read and ignore Sherlock while he babbled incomprehensibly about things John would have a hard time following even if he could bring himself to try. That’s what this afternoon had been, or was supposed to be. It had been a few hours with Sherlock put in so Sherlock would not grow suspicious of John’s avoidance. Spending any more time than that with Sherlock right now was too painful and too dangerous. They were not meant to be anything more than they were, and John wasn’t so sure any more that they were even meant to be that much.

No, jjust because his stomach had twisted awfully when Sherlock had rejected him the night they met, and had twisted just as bad every time since he had to brush off a joke or a misunderstanding about their partnership since then, it did not mean that he and Sherlock could ever be anything more. Just because his denials were growing increasingly terse and violent out of frustration of seeming to have to repeat it all the time, did not mean they were destined to be together.

And now, particularly after what had happened, he and Sherlock very definitively could never and would never, ever, be anything more, because of the thing he couldn’t think about.

“John,” a voice came softly from above him and then someone sat down beside him.

“Sherlock, now is really not a good time,” his voice sounded far more desperate and pleading than he had meant it to.

“I don’t understand why you’re acting this way. None of this information is new, nothing has changed.”

John felt some tension slip from his shoulders. Maybe he had misunderstood what Sherlock’s opening up had meant. Maybe he was just projecting his feelings for Sherlock onto him. Of course Sherlock admitting that he cared for John didn’t mean anything more than that. He had already known they were friends. That’s probably all Sherlock meant. John was just so wound up about Moriarty that he was expecting the worst when it wasn’t even coming. Sherlock was right, none of this was new information. Sherlock may have never said it, but it was obvious that if a man with a reputation like Sherlock's kept someone around for as much time as he kept John around, Sherlock was at least a little fond of him, even if the reasons Sherlock was fond of John might not be any of the normal reasons one person liked another.

“Right. I’m sorry, I guess just the mention of Moriarty made me go a bit mental, you know,” John made excuses, trying to back pedal.

“Of course. It was my mistake to not realize how the incident with Moriarty might have affected you. I understand how people react psychologically to trauma and it was too optimistic of me to hope that you’d be completely fine. You are after all just a person.”

The rage flashed for a moment. John did his best to stamp it down, but his comment was still far too bitter, and it was a comment that John would come to deeply regret.

“Yes, of course, I’m just a person. Nothing like you. You know what, Sherlock, I think maybe I need to take a break from this, from all of this. Maybe, maybe I’ll go see if Harry’s in one of those rare clean periods and is feeling generous enough to let me crash on her couch. Or is pissed enough not to notice, doesn’t really matter. I just feel like I’m slowing you down. ”

“Oh, John.” The tone of Sherlock’s voice caused John, who over the course of the afternoon had worked himself into a toxic cocktail of emotion, to let out a strangled gasp that sounded much too much like a sob. There was so much pity and sadness in Sherlock’s voice, John couldn’t bear it.

“Please, don’t. Whatever you're going to say, don’t,” John choked.

John could feel Sherlock’s eyes on him, calculating. Trying to find an answer. After a silence that felt like an eternity, Sherlock spoke.

“This isn’t about Moriarty, is it? This is about me.”

John tried, he really did, to brush him off. He had planned to say something like “ _About you, you arrogant git?”_ but instead he said nothing. He couldn’t make anything come out of his mouth. Everything had gone so horribly wrong.

“You care for me as well,” Sherlock said far too simply. The implication of his words hung in the air though, and suddenly London felt so small, like it was closing in on him.

“What would it matter if I did? It doesn’t matter,” John finally found his voice, but it of course betrayed him, saying exactly the wrong thing.

“John, I think we may have both been very dishonest with each other recently and it has put up a barrier in our relationship that I think is crucial we tear down in order to be able to move on with the Moriarty case.”

John considered getting angry at Sherlock again for rationalizing taking a huge never before mentioned leap in their relationship because it was convenient and because it was getting in the way of his work. But John’s mind instead turned to mush as it echoed another thing that Sherlock had said.

“ _We’ve_ been dishonest?"

“Yes. Both of us. Unless I’m misunderstanding the situation, but I am, as you’ve stated, a genius after all," Sherlock grinned at John, but his smile did't quite reach his eyes. "But there is a criminal mastermind, although apparently one who is much more boring than I initially anticipated, loose in London imminently causing chaos so I really think that it would be best if we stop being held back by repressed emotions.”

“Repressed emotions?” John squawked, still hoping to sound scandalized but instead just sounding pathetic.

“Oh, John.” There it was again. That tone of voice. John couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t stand this anymore. This couldn’t be happening. Not this, not now. But before his mind could spin itself in any more frantic circles, Sherlock’s lips crashed into his and suddenly John could think of nothing else.

It was everything he had hoped it would be, in those few moments when he let his mind wander to consider what it might be like to be with Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock’s tongue was in his mouth and he couldn’t remember ever granting entrance. Nor could he remember ever considering denying it. And god, was it an amazing tongue. John had a fair deal of experience snogging, but this was something else entirely. John had never imagined that Sherlock had a lot of experience with kissing, but either Sherlock’s genius extended to all things or he’d been keeping some things from John.

But none of that mattered really. Because Sherlock was kissing John. And it was brilliant. And John was kissing back.

It was over much too quickly and John was dropped back into reality, panting as Sherlock pulled away. Though Sherlock’s lips were no longer on his, he was still close to him, head nuzzling the crook of his neck.

“I think it may be best, John, if we continued this conversation somewhere more private,” Sherlock whispered in John’s ear in between gentle kisses along his jaw.

“ _Yes_ ,” John moaned, tipping his head back to give Sherlock better access to his neck. Unfortunately though, Sherlock’s lips left his neck as he moved to stand up, grabbing John’s hand and pulling him up after him.

The walk back to the flat felt so impossibly long. The warm of Sherlock's hand in John's own was wonderful, but it wasn't nearly enough. However, the second they made their way up the stairs and crossed the threshold into the flat, Sherlock’s lips crashed back into John’s and the journey home wiped itself from John’s memory and he was no longer sure anymore exactly how they had gotten to this point.

Sherlock left John’s lips again in favor of his neck, and John took the opportunity to gasp as Sherlock’s hands slipped themselves under his jumper, those marvelous fingers dancing along his stomach and then to his back along his spine.

“Fuck, Sherlock,” John groaned.

“Only if you want to,” Sherlock murmured against John’s pulse point.

It was such a clever thing to say. Well, in fact, out of all the things that Sherlock had ever said, it was probably one of the _least_ clever things he’d ever said. But yet, it still seemed like the most quintessentially Sherlock thing to have ever been said. And it left John's mind spinning.

He wanted to so, so badly. For so long he had wanted this. But not now, dammit. It was too late now. But being so close to Sherlock felt so wonderful, and he didn’t want it to end. They’d already gone so much farther than John should have allowed anyway, what would it matter if they took it a bit further? Just this once. Just to know what it was like, so he wouldn’t wonder forever. It was all going to fall apart so spectacularly soon, maybe he could just have this one good thing. Everything else had gone so bad, he just needed this one good thing.

John suddenly realized the absence of Sherlock’s lips on his body and he opened his eyes to see Sherlock staring at him. He realized that Sherlock had taken his hesitation was a withdrawal of consent. John realized that Sherlock was giving him a way out. He could reject Sherlock right now. They'd be embarrassed, but Sherlock would probably take the strategy of pretending nothing had ever happened and avoiding John for a while. Which was of course exactly what John would need in the coming weeks. But he couldn’t, not now. Not after wanting this for so long. And the raging erection that had developed somewhere along the way wasn’t helping. He was only human after all.

So John stepped forwards, grabbed Sherlock and kissed him. Sherlock eagerly returned the kiss. After a few moments John decided it was his turn to go exploring, and he began to undo the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt and run his hands slowly down Sherlock’s pale chest. Sherlock shrugged the shirt off, and it fell to the floor. John continued to let his hands roam.

He pulled back from Sherlock and looked him in the eyes.

“Ask me again?” John queried. Sherlock didn’t miss a beat before he responded.

“Do you want to—,” but before he could finish, John responded with a grin.

“Oh, God, yes.”

And then they were kissing again, and John carefully guided Sherlock backwards towards Sherlock’s room, trying to keep their mouths locked together while also avoiding tripping over the carpet, or chair, or random pile of books, or anything else that could lead John to spending the afternoon with Sherlock at A&E with a concussion instead of in his bed.

Eventually, the back of Sherlock’s knees hit the bed and he fell backwards onto it, pulling John with him so that he landed directly on top of Sherlock, sandwiching him in between his body and the mattress. John erupted into a fit of giggles, and Sherlock chuckled as well. John noticed the look in his eyes was so soft, so fond, that John felt his stomach twist and his laughter stopped. Sherlock was going to be so hurt when he found out about the thing John couldn’t think about. But John wanted this. When was the last time he had been so selfish? Did he deserve to be so selfish, considering what he’d done? No, probably not. Definitely not.

“John?”

John looked down at Sherlock who was gazing up at him with confusion.

“What,” John paused, trying to figure out how to phrase the question without saying more than he could. He couldn’t do this unless Sherlock had at least a little warning. “What if this doesn’t work out?”

“John, I’m not proposing to you. I realize that statistically plenty of sexual relationships end, and sometimes badly. But we can’t continue any other way, can we? I’ve explored every other option, considered all the possibilities. This is the best one for us, I think.”

At the words ‘ _for us_ ,’ John’s hesitancy melted away.

“Toe off your shoes?” he said as he kicked off his own, signaling his willingness to move forwards.

Sherlock smiled and John felt Sherlock’s hips shift under him as he mimicked John’s actions, ridding his feet of his shoes. This also caused Sherlock’s erection to grind against John and he groaned at the friction.

“Hold that thought,” Sherlock said and John was momentarily confused until Sherlock pushed against John, rolling them across the mattress so they lay parallel to the length of the bed, also leaving it so Sherlock was now on top.

“Better?” John asked, quirking an eyebrow as he looked up at Sherlock.

“Much,” Sherlock drawled before attacking John’s mouth, his hands quickly back under John’s jumper.

John considered for a second taking another pause, as much as he hated the concept, to remove some more clothing, but then felt Sherlock’s hand dive through the slit in the front of his pants and grasp his cock, causing John to gasp. When Sherlock had gotten his trousers unbuttoned John wasn’t sure, but he didn’t care.

John was left immobilized at the friction Sherlock’s hand was providing, his back arched off the mattress, his mouth open and face contorted as he moaned.

"Sorry I'm a little eager. I've just waited so long for this," Sherlock whispered and it took all of John's self control not to come right then.

He came back to his senses when he realized that Sherlock was grinding himself against his hip as he pleasured John. John was a very proud man, and he was far too proud to leave Sherlock to get off by dry humping him like a teenager, doing all of the work on his own. He managed to get between Sherlock’s groin and his hip, and Sherlock obliged to stop rutting against him for long enough for John to undo his trousers and shove his hand down his pants to grasp his cock.

Once he had his hand wrapped around Sherlock, he realized he did not know how to make his touch have as much finesse as Sherlock’s seemed to. But as he felt his orgasm begin to build, he realized that he had no time to be delicate if he wanted to have any chance of getting Sherlock off. He began to tug frantically on Sherlock’s cock. He worried that he wasn’t going to be able to make Sherlock feel as good as he was making him feel and that he should have left him to the rutting, since jerking Sherlock off with this level of ferocity and deftlessness was probably just as juvenile as dry humping, but then Sherlock began making the most wonderful noises.

The groans that came from deep within Sherlock’s chest seemed to vibrate through John and all at once he was pushed over the edge. John tried to keep pumping Sherlock as his orgasm coursed through him, but he couldn’t get his limbs to cooperate. Thankfully, Sherlock seemed to understand, or was just too close to tolerate John’s complete uselessness, and began to thrust his hips, fucking John’s fist until he came, collapsing on top of John.

After they both caught their breaths, Sherlock rolled off of John and curled up into his side, nuzzling his head into the crook of John’s neck. John heard him sigh contentedly. He wanted to wrap his arm around Sherlock and pull him closer, to stroke his back while murmuring ridiculous endearments praising the other man, but he realized his hand was covered in Sherlock’s come, and the waistband of his pants own pants felt sticky.

He sighed, hesitant to move, but slowly sat up, causing Sherlock to fall away from him with a whimper. He shushed Sherlock comfortingly as he lifted his hips and tugged his trousers and pants the rest of the way off, using his pants to clean up himself and Sherlock before tossing them across the room. He thought about taking off his jumper, feeling unbalanced fully dressed from the waist up but completely starkers from the waist down, but apparently he’d already taken enough time, because Sherlock growled and pulled him back down onto the mattress, quickly reclaiming John’s shoulder as his pillow.

John sighed in defeat and managed to shimmy the thoroughly mussed duvet down far enough that he could slide his bare legs and hips under it.

John lay still under the covers, with Sherlock curled into his side, feeling the other man’s breath against his neck. He felt heavy with contentedness, and allowed his eyes to fall shut. He quickly forgot about the fact that he was still wearing his jumper, that Sherlock was still wearing his trousers, that he was caked in sweat and desperately in need of a shower, and the fact that it was likely about dinner time and he shouldn’t let Sherlock get away with skipping yet another meal. Instead John drifted to sleep.

John made three very large mistakes that afternoon. The first was exploding at Sherlock and threatening to leave him, sparking Sherlock’s decision to take drastic measures by journeying to previously avoided territory. The second was giving into his desire and allowing their relationship to be taken to that new level. And the third and probably biggest mistake was to fall asleep afterwards.

Darkness surrounded John, he seemed to be floating in some sort of void. After an unmeasured moment he realized he was lying against something hard and cold and there was a heavy and unfamiliar weight on his chest. His hands reached out, groping nothing but what he realized was a tile floor, which he was lying on.

“ _Johnny-boy, are you awake? I was getting so tired of waiting. We’re going to have company soon!”_ a far too chipper voice sang in his ear. John’s hands flew to his head, and he realized he was wearing an earpiece.

“ _What do you want?”_ John said coldly. He didn’t want to sound afraid. He was a soldier,he was trained for situations like this. But his mind was racing as he tried to piece together what was going on.

“ _Oh, ever the stoic one, aren't you Johnny-boy! Is that why Sherlock is so fascinated with you? I’d have hoped it would take a bit more than foolish bravery to win the loyalties of Sherlock Holmes._ ”

John couldn’t think of anything to say, but the man through the earpiece, who John realized was likely Moriarty, seemed perfectly willing to keep talking.

“ _But for whatever reason, Sherlock seems to be quite smitten with you, and because of this, I need something from you, Johnny-boy_.” John cringed with the repeated use of the horrible and condescending nickname and he felt his blood begin to boil.

“ _What makes you think I’d do anything for you?_ ” John spat, using the rage surging through him to heave himself off the floor and into a seated position.

“ _Oh, Johnny-boy, so stubborn. I have plans, and since I doubt I could get you out of the way without breaking my favorite new toy, I’ve decided to incorporate you into them. See, I was worried at first that you’d get in the way. But after watching you and Sherlock together, I realized that using you will be sooo much better._ ” Moriarty spoke in a sing song pattern that to John felt like the textbook definition of insanity.

John opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, Moriarty continued.

“ _Don’t bother, Johnny-boy. While I can think of lots of things you could use that mouth of yours for, we don’t have time for them now. There’s nothing that you could possibly say to stop me! You see, I’m going to tell you my plan for you and when I finish, you’re going to nod and get up, and walk out the door that’s to the right of you_. _I’m going to leave you speechless!_ ”

Then suddenly the floor seemed to fall out from under him, and Moriarty’s face appeared above him, contorted with mad laughter.

John woke up, a scream tearing from his throat. He tried to thrash, but he couldn’t move.

“John,” a panicked voice called to him. “John, it’s okay. It’s okay,” the voice repeated over and over.

John got his eyes to focus, and he realized that Sherlock was sitting on his waist and had his arms pinned on either side of his head in order to prevent John from thrashing.

“Sherlock,” John choked.

“It’s alright John. I should have known. I’m so sorry I didn’t know.”

John felt another wave of panic run through him. How did Sherlock know? Had he talked in his sleep? Sherlock wasn’t supposed to know. It wasn’t a part of the plan.

“I had heard you having nightmares all week, and I thought that it was just a return of your PTSD because of the stress. But Moriarty said something to you, something that you didn’t tell me, didn’t he? And you’ve been keeping it from me, haven't you? You foolish, stubborn man! Why do you always have to be so brave?"

John cringed at the word ‘brave,’ but felt the panic dissipate. Sherlock didn’t know, not really. He had only deduced that his mind wasn’t in the desert while he was dreaming.

“It was nothing. Just threatened me a bit. It didn’t seem relevant. I had hoped if I ignored it, I would be fine,” John admitted hesitantly.

“Oh, John,” Sherlock sighed. "You’re safe. I won’t let him hurt us, do you understand? He'll be nothing by the time I'm through with him.” Sherlock babbled reassurances, but John couldn’t bring himself to listen to them. He smiled weakly at Sherlock, but he felt nauseated.

“I’ll never let him hurt us,” he heard Sherlock repeat.

 _Oh Sherlock_ , John though, _it's not Moriarty you need to worry about there_. 

 


	2. The Face

Sherlock was reasonably surprised, which was something that rarely happened to him.

He had always imagined that romantic relationships would get in his way, that even just sex alone, none the less the obligations of anything more, would pose an unnecessary distraction. He had even thought that he would perhaps be unable to feel such feelings, since he valued his work over all else. But since he had met John Watson it had become increasingly clear that Sherlock was, in fact, capable of having romantic feelings for someone, and that those feelings would come to compromise his work.

The fact of the matter was that he could no longer picture his life without John, and Sherlock realized that if he didn’t open up to John about how he really felt, he was going to lose him. And so not having John had suddenly come to mean Sherlock couldn’t do his work, which was completely unacceptable.

And so he’d told John, and things had escalated quickly.

Now he was in a relationship with John Watson, more or less anyway, and it was wonderful. John seemed hesitant to define their relationship, and definitely was not ready to tell other people, but he had stopped gallivanting around the city with any woman who looked at him twice and was spending the night in Sherlock’s bed, so Sherlock assumed it counted as a relationship. And whatever it was, it was good enough for him, because he still had John, which was all that mattered.

No matter what it was, Sherlock was thrilled. Nearly as thrilled as he was when that serial killer had managed to get involved in a murder/suicide, which was related to a series of robberies. Which is to say it was _better_ than Christmas. He could have never imagined how wonderful it could be to be having regular sex with someone. Or hell, even just to be cuddled next to someone on the sofa while bickering about the idiocrasy of reality television or to be dragged into an alley way for a snog after a day running about in London. It didn’t get in the way. It made his mind sharper. It made him more eager. It made his body pulse with a new found energy.

There was one problem, however. It wasn’t a problem with the concept of being in a relationship, as he would have once expected, but it was a problem with the relationship, which Sherlock had not anticipated. Or more specifically, there seemed to be a problem with John. Or maybe it was himself who had the problem and John was just reacting to him. He hadn’t quite figured it out yet, but something was definitely off.

John had been very hesitant to enter into a relationship with Sherlock. He did repeatedly make it clear that he wanted to be, every time Sherlock had given John an opportunity to back out, John had responded by kissing him passionately. But maybe that was the problem. John wouldn’t talk to Sherlock about whatever it was that even now, after two weeks, made John sometimes become momentarily distant.

Things would be fine one moment, they would be talking or laughing or kissing or shagging and then suddenly John would seem to go somewhere else, and Sherlock couldn’t figure out exactly where that place was.

Normally, people didn’t need to tell Sherlock things for him to know. Sherlock would be able to figure it out all on his own. It was what he did. He could read peoples life stories from the lines on their faces and the bend of their hands. But right now he couldn't read John at all. And it made him want to tear his hair out.

But, Sherlock _had_ deduced John’s problem. He had figured out that Moriarty had traumatized John more than he initially thought. However, he couldn’t get John to tell him why, even after Sherlock had promised to protect him, and Sherlock kept seeing that look of terror sometimes cross John’s face.

So Sherlock did the only thing he could think to do, which was to make sure that John was never alone, never without protection. John could hold his own in a fight, Sherlock knew that of course, but clearly Moriarty’s men were good. They worked hard to make sure their presence wasn’t known and would be willing to sneak up from behind. They didn’t feel the need to show off their strength, to dominate their victim. They just did their job, and they did it well. And John didn’t stand a chance, no matter how vigilant he was.

So, Sherlock insisted that John be with him every time he went out, for every single case. He never suggested that they split up, unless he was leaving him with Lestrade, and even then he was hesitant. He had even started going with John to do the shopping, which seemed to deeply alarm John.

He was hesitant to leave John alone even with Mrs. Hudson in the safety of the flat. She was herself a rather formidable woman, but wouldn’t understand the direness of John’s need for protection even if Sherlock tried to explain it, and John would likely end up volunteering to run out and pick up some milk and never return home.

The only times he was willing to let John out of his sight was when John had to go to work at the surgery or to go out for drink with Mike or Lestrade. 

He had tried, of course, to stop even these these outings from happening, but John refused to quit his job or stop seeing his friends, or to agree to let Sherlock come along. At the mere suggestion from Sherlock, John threw a fit, calling Sherlock controlling, stating that he still needed his space sometimes, telling him that there was no way this could work if he didn’t let him live his life. It was the biggest row in their two weeks of being in a relationship, and John had slept in his own bed that night.

Sherlock didn’t quite understand what was wrong with the life he had built for John around himself. The one with calculated risks and boring threats from lazy criminals. The one that was safe. That’s what John wanted, after all: to be safe from Moriarty. That’s what all his reactions pointed to.

But no matter what he did, Sherlock still couldn’t seem to reassure John.

But after their fight, he became quick to make sure he didn’t try to take things too far again, and he and John quickly fell back into their rather domestic pattern.

It had been three days without a case, and Sherlock was getting antsy. It used to take him at least a week to get to this level of distress over not having a case, but with John’s blog generating a constant stream of clients, albeit mostly incredibly dull ones, combined with new I’m-having-regular-intercourse energy that Sherlock had, three days felt like an eternity. Moriarty hadn’t made any sort of identifiable new move, so as much as Sherlock tried there was really little work he could do there.

He had gotten John to stop reading his ridiculous medical journals in favor of every single newspaper that he could get his hands on, even the crap commuter papers that were glorified tabloids that men shouted at you to take outside of underground stations. Of course it didn’t matter to Sherlock what celebrity had died or had an affair most recently, what Prince Harry was up to now a day, or that Parliament was completely incompetent in general. But he hoped somewhere in the pages John would find something interesting.

Celebrity gossip was at least as useless as John’s medical journals anyway. What did cosmetic advances in skin grafts or new treatments for toenail fungus matter? While occasionally John’s journals reported medical breakthroughs that even Sherlock had to admit might actually matter, usually they were mind numbingly boring.

But John though had found nothing in any of the papers. Every crime reported in all the newspapers, even the ones that weren’t local, seemed to have been solved already. And he and John had already both came twice that day and had gone out to pick up biscuits and orange juice, despite the fact that they didn’t really need them. So Sherlock was unfathomably bored.

“ _You have never felt compelled to drink orange juice before! And we have a packet of Bourbons and two of digestives!_ ” John had exclaimed in frustration when Sherlock had made the suggestion of running to the Tesco down the street. Sherlock had been insistent, though, that he absolutely needed Jammie Dodgers, and the only thing he would eat them with was orange juice, as it was something he’d done as a child and he was feeling nostalgic. He’d quickly come to regret this lie horribly when John dunked one of the biscuits in the orange juice and held it in front of Sherlock expectantly. When Sherlock was unable to hide his disgust, despite trying valiantly to eat the soggy sickeningly sweet biscuit, he mumbled something about having forgotten that it was actually hobnobs with blackcurrant squash and he didn’t combine the two, anyway.

John did not look at all like he believed him.

He then demanded that Sherlock finish his glass of orange juice and the small mountain of biscuits that he had already laid out on a plate anyway, no matter how he wanted to eat them.

So Sherlock was now curled up on the sofa, facing away from the rest of the room, clenching his aching stomach and brooding horribly. John sat across the room, probably reading about the advancements of antimalarials or something else that was obviously completely irrelevant to everything.

When he heard John’s phone buzz from across the room, he held his breath hoping that whoever was on the other end of the message John had just received had something even just vaguely interesting to say.

“I’m going to the pub with Mike tomorrow,” John announced. Sherlock deflated.

“I’m beginning to worry you’re becoming your sister, John. You’ve gone out more nights in the past week than you haven’t,” Sherlock grumbled, not entirely sure if John could understand him since he was speaking mostly into a cushion. It wasn’t even exactly true, of course, but Sherlock wasn’t in the mood to be fair anymore. John was only going out two nights a week, but he usually coupled them with days he was working at the surgery, meaning he’d go straight from work to the pub, and Sherlock wouldn’t see him all day.

“I’m allowed to have friends, Sherlock,” John stated. Sherlock heard John’s mobile buzz again.

“Also, Mycroft says that you should stop whinging about not having a case and check your bloody phone,” he paused, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips, “Well, he didn’t say bloody, I added that part. Mycroft is too dignified for that, at least via text, but I suppose you already know.”

Sherlock was only half listening to John, having jumped from the sofa at the mention of his mobile. He ran to the desk where it rested to charge and saw half a dozen messages from Mycroft. He then heard the sound of a door slamming in the street below and looked down from the window to see Lestrade walk up to the front door of the building, tossing something to the ground as a went.

Sherlock didn’t even bother to read Mycroft’s texts before he put the phone down and bounded across the room to John.

“There’s been a murder! More than one! A possible serial killer!” he exclaimed, sounding absolutely giddy.

“Thank fucking God, go have fun,” John muttered, barely looking up from his medical journal, but with a small smile, pleased at Sherlock’s change of mood.

Sherlock quickly grew upset that John was not sharing in his excitement. He ripped the journal from John’s hands and held it in the air over his head, out of John’s reach.

“Give that back you prat!” John protested, shooting out of his chair and jumping to try and grab the journal back from Sherlock’s grasp.

“Don’t you even think about trying to stay behind, John! You have to come. Moriarty has finally made another move!”

At the mention of Moriarty, John froze. He slowly lowered his hand from the air and he fell backwards into his chair.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. Sherlock’s excitement faltered when he noticed that terrified look in John’s eyes.

“Well, we can’t be positive at this stage, but six text messages from Mycroft encouraging my participation, and Lestrade reluctantly bringing us onto a case that they’ve been trying to keep quiet after two other matching murders in addition to this one, it has to be Moriarty’s doing,” Sherlock knelt down before John, grasping John’s hands, which remained limp as he squeezed them. “You must come along, John. You have more experience with Moriarty than I do, even if only by a few minutes. Plus, the case has a medical aspect to it.”

“How would you know?” John asked.

“I’d like to know that myself,” Lestrade said from the doorway, Ms. Hudson having apparently already let him in. Sherlock quickly dropped John's hands and shot up, his and John's position just compromising enough that even someone as dense as Lestrade might be able to sort out the shift in his and John's relationship that John wasn't ready for anyone else to know about.

“You’ve been smoking,” Sherlock said simply after turning to face Lestrade, “Which usually could just mean a row with your wife, _again_ , or that Anderson has done something particularly moronic, or simply that it's Monday. But no, this is not smoking out of stress, it’s out of spite. You usually smoke low tar cigarettes, or even roll your own, but you specifically bought menthols. Which can only mean that the medical examiner had to be called to the scene immediately to consult with you directly.”

“What do menthols have to do with the medical examiner?” John asked.

Sherlock looked at Lestrade and raised his eyebrows.

“I only smoke menthols when Harrison’s around because they piss him off, even more than regular ones. The man is obsessive with his health and the health of everyone around him. Won’t shut up about all the ways I’m killing myself when he only needs to focus on how the victim was killed, mind you. I usually don’t let him on the scene until after I’ve left, but I can’t do that because of the nature of this case. But if I have to talk to him face to face rather than just read his report, I might as well try and give him lung cancer while I’m at it,” Lestrade shrugged. “How you knew that before I even stepped into the room, I don’t even care to know anymore.”

“A DI really shouldn’t litter,” Sherlock quipped, and Lestrade groaned. “But why are we talking about Lestrade’s attempts to kill his colleague when we should be on our way to a crime scene where there is a person who’s already been murdered! The fact that you’ve been consulting Harrison enough to get through an entire pack of menthols before you came to us is an insult,” Sherlock had tried to act haughty, but had far to eagerly rushed to put on his coat, not taking notice of the fact that John had picked back up the medical journal that Sherlock had abandoned upon Lestrade’s entrance.

“If the medical examiner has already been there, I don’t see what help I could be. I’m not trained in pathology. If you want a second opinion, call Molly. And you’re a chemist, who at this point could probably sit the FRCPath exam and pass without even considering the possibility of revising for it, Sherlock. Between all of you I’m sure you can sort it out without me. I’ll order some take-out to have for you when you get back,” John said.

“This case isn’t specifically pathological,” Lestrade said. “If you’re going to class its anomaly, it’s more surgical than anything else.” Sherlock looked thrilled at Lestrade’s elaboration, while John scowled.

“I’m not a surgeon anymore. I’m hardly even a GP,” John grumbled stubbornly.

“John,” Sherlock whinged.

“John, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think you would like to see this. It’s kind of spectacular. In a horrific way, but from a medical standpoint, I’ve been told anyway, that it’s phenomenal work that has been done to these bodies,” Lestrade said and John glared at the other man, probably regretting that strange character trait of his that allowed people to like him and bother consider his interests, Sherlock imagined.

“Yes, why exactly didn’t you bring me in weeks ago? And why haven’t the press reported on it yet?” Sherlock asked.

“We’ve been unable to identify the victims, and the case is rather horrific, so we haven’t had much information to report, and no desire to cause an unnecessary panic, so we’ve avoid calling a press conference or releasing any of the more interesting bits in the press releases. And we do like to imagine that we aren’t completely incompetent down at The Yard, despite what you believe, Sherlock. But the way the bodies are mutilated, we don't know what to make of it without someone who has more, er, background in this kind of thing," Lestrade said. 

Sherlock couldn't help but grin. Moriarty. Lestrade may not have said anything about the man, but what he did say was more than enough of a confirmation for Sherlock.

John sighed, “Is there really no way I can convince you to let me not come?”

Sherlock paused for a moment to consider. He wanted John with him, but maybe he was so put off by the Moriarty case that insisting that he come along would do him more harm than good. “I can call Mycroft to send a car to pick you up. He can arrange someone to watch you while I’m gone.”

“I don’t need a babysitter!”

Apparently, judging by the tone of John’s voice, Sherlock’s suggestion had not at all been an appropriate one.

“But Moriarty is active again, John, that puts you at risk! I said I wouldn’t let him hurt you again and I meant it,” Sherlock said in exasperation.

Sherlock held John’s gaze for a few seconds, trying to make John see how earnest he was being. John turned his head away violently, breaking eye contact with Sherlock.

“I’m not afraid of Moriarty!” John shouted in protest.

He was met with more silence as both Sherlock and Lestrade stared at him in shock from his outburst.

“Then why won’t you come?” Sherlock finally asked quietly.

“Fine,” John threw down his journal and stood up, “I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll stand in the corner and you’ll tell me I’m being boring and dim witted when I offer a suggestion and you won’t know the answer and you’ll come home and ignore me and won’t come to bed because you’re on the case. And in the morning I’ll eat breakfast by myself. And next week someone else will be dead and you’ll get angry and you’ll throw things that I’ll have to clean up, and when does it end?” John choked. He’d begun his speech strong, but by the end his voice wavered, and he ran out of steam, revealing an alarming level of anguish.

Sherlock looked shocked and Lestrade was completely taken aback and was entirely sure he’d missed something very important. Sherlock was beginning to think he had as well.

The silence was broken by the buzzing of John’s mobile. John looked at the message and his face paled. Sherlock watched in confusion.

“What’s wrong?” Sherlock asked.

His question was met with silence.

“It’s nothing. No one.” John hastily shut the phone off and stuffed it into his pocket. “I thought we had a crime scene to get to?” John headed out the door of the flat, leaving a very confused Sherlock and Lestrade to follow him, trying to figure out the sudden about face from John.

The ride to the crime scene was silent. Lestrade had given Sherlock the address and had taken his car and John and Sherlock sat alone in the back of a cab. Sherlock racked his brain trying to figure out reasons why John was behaving so oddly, but none of the data pointed to any sort of conclusive answer, or even a reasonably good guess. Sherlock had always liked that John was unpredictable. The fact that he didn’t follow the usual patterns of human behavior all the time, but not in a way that was the typical deviant either, had always made him interesting to Sherlock. But now it was driving Sherlock insane.

Sherlock and John arrived at the crime scene, which was an old warehouse in Camden Town that had been for a while used as a night club, but was in the midst of a remodel to turn it into some sort of niche restaurant. The construction had stalled currently though, and the building had been left locked and vacant for weeks. A tip had been called in, alerting the police to the body, and the building had been locked and undisturbed when the police had arrived to check out the tip. Now, though, the building was surrounded in a line of police cars and tape. Sherlock and John exited the cab and met Lestrade at the door.

“Alright, I know I’ve already mentioned it, but this body, it’s incredibly, well, creepy. Feels like what you’d get if you mixed a horror, espionage, and and alien film together.”

“Yes, alright, your metaphors mean little to me and are not getting me any closer to bringing down Moriarty,” Sherlock said, trying to peer past Lestrade into the building.

“Right,” Lestrade grumbled. “Well let’s get on with it then,” he said, stepping through the entrance of the building. Sherlock eagerly followed and then quickly took the lead.

The space inside was huge, and as the large building was nearly hollow, and you could see the body right away. In the center of the large room, it lay on a metal table. Large lights and tarps surrounded it, the set up reminiscent of an operating theatre.

“We didn’t bring any of that stuff in, it was all already here,” Lestrade informed him.

Sherlock approached the body, feeling John and Lestrade hesitantly follow a step behind him. When he finally saw the body, he couldn’t help but gape. This was definitely the work of Moriarty, or at least someone who specifically was out for Sherlock. All identifying features of the body, anything that could have possibly told Sherlock anything about the victim was completely removed. He could tell the victim was a Caucasian male, likely in his 30’s or 40’s, and that he was relatively fit at the time of his death. But anything else that could have possibly narrowed him down from the thousands of people that could describe, and the hundreds of them who were reported missing, was gone. There was nothing left for Sherlock to observe and make deductions from.The mans fingertips, it appeared, had been dipped in acid, removing the print and leaving the fingertips red and bloody from the chemical burns. All the hair from his body had been removed, from his head to his toes. It looked like it had been waxed off, which for a full grown man with a lifetime of body hair must have taken ages.

But most alarmingly, the man didn’t have a face. There were no eyes, nose, mouth, just a smooth layer of skin. The skin dipped where the eye sockets were, along with the mouth. The cartilage off the nose had been removed as well, causing another dip in the skeleton where it should have been.

No, it had to be Moriarty. If someone wanted a victim not to be identified, you could hide the body. If you wanted to disfigure it you could use acid or burn it. But this, this was mocking Sherlock.

“The hair removal is probably a bit overkill,” Anderson said, appearing out of nowhere, much to Sherlock’s displeasure. Sherlock saw John startle in surprise out of the corner of his eye and his desire to strangle Anderson increased tenfold. “There are other ways to get DNA. The whole body is made of it.” Anderson finished haughtily.

“The hair wasn’t removed for DNA purposes. Only a microscopic percentage of the population have their DNA sequences recorded in searchable files, DNA evidence is only helpful to match to a pre-existing sample, anyway. It was likely removed partially to make identifying this man even more challenging, simply because hair color, style, and facial hair or lack thereof can be crucial to the identification of someone, and partially for effect.”

Anderson scowled at Sherlock but said nothing.

“Okay,” Lestrade broke what seemed to be the thousandth round of silence that fell that afternoon. “But what about the face. I mean, he doesn’t have one!”

“Well, I assume that since you’ve likely already done autopsies on the two other bodies, you tell me. Are his teeth still in his skull under the skin, or were they removed as well? They’re removed aren’t they?” Sherlock was getting a bit giddy again. “Of course they’re removed, dental records are a reasonable way of identifying remains and show traces of a persons lifestyle and priorities,” Sherlock turned to glare at Anderson. “Are his eyes still in there, as well? And how was original the skin of his face removed?” Sherlock was flying around the body, trying to find answers on the blank canvas. “And of course, how did he die? Was it poison? I love poisonings. No one ever commits a good poisoning anymore, and I don’t know why not. Although the statistics don’t report it, I believe poison is likely the best way to get away with murder, assuming you don’t have any attachments to your victim. But the only people who ever seem to poison people anymore are parents or carers of children, the disabled, or the elderly, usually to collect life insurance. But I bet he was poisoned with something nearly undetectable, right?” Sherlock spoke excitedly.

“He was shot. In the head,” came John’s voice suddenly, pulling Sherlock out of his reverie. His voice had been quiet, and was laced with an emotion that Sherlock couldn’t identify, but could only attempt to describe as cold.

“He’s right, or that was at least the case with the other two,” Lestrade confirmed. “How did you know?”

“The skin graft that covers his face continues to the back of his head. I assume that it’s covering the exit wound. That’s probably why the head is so smooth, because the suture line where the graft ends are under the chin and jaw and probably along the back of the neck as well as tucked behind the ears,” John shrugged and Sherlock stared at him confounded.

“The skin grafting though is astonishing. I have friends who’ve had grafts from burns and their skin doesn’t look quite right afterwards, and even still it takes time to heal,” Lestrade said.

“There was a new study recently in which donor skin was taken from donors who have passed, as you would for most other organ donations. The process allows them to take more than what had been taken in full-thickness grafts previously, taking the full dermis, but also the layers of tissue in the reticular region and part of the hypodermis. The process was tested specifically as an effort to create more aesthetically pleasing grafts. The process received a lot of criticism, because as far as limiting the chance of complication and ease of recovery, research into skin gun technology is probably a better use of research.

“This process mostly introduces a whole new dimension of rejection that usually is relatively rare in skin grafting, at least in comparison to other kinds of organ donation where the donor organ comes from another person. The research was based on the idea of extending composite skin grafts, which are usually only small surface area grafts but take other layers of tissue and cartilage. But the largest graft in the study was only a half a dozen centimeters and most their research was done with pigs, they didn’t achieve enough success to work with human subjects,” John explained. “This graft though, must have taken half a meter of skin from a donor. But I mean, since this man was probably already dead when he received the graft, rejection isn’t an issue. It’s more like some sort of skin mask that was welded onto the face after the original tissue was removed. It’s honestly more like scalping, a real bastardization of medicine, this is,” John’s voice was rough and he even sounded angry.

“So, was he still his own donor? Did they take the graft from his back?” Sherlock asked, leaning to try and peer at the underside of the body without actually disrupting it to turn it over.

“The other two showed no signs of skin removal for grafting.”

“So somewhere, there are three other bodies that are linked to this case, who all potentially could have been murdered as well, of a similar skin tone,” Sherlock intoned.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Lestrade said.

“We don’t know anything for sure, except apparently that John’s bollocks medical journals come in handy after all. Is everything I think I know a lie?” Sherlock groaned, turning away from the body to begin pacing, running his hands through his hair, closing his fists around the dark curls and tugging in agitation.

“Now, Sherlock, I think that’s a bit overdramatic isn’t it? John, who you brought along because of his medical expertise, knowing a bit more about medicine then you isn’t exactly the end of the world. That’s why you have a partner, I assume,” Lestrade said.

Sherlock stopped pacing and looked over at John. John stood across the body from him and was staring very intensely at his shoes and looked frustrated and uncomfortable.

“Right. Right. Of course. Of course!” Sherlock’s pacing began again and was frantic. He was spinning back and forth on the balls of his feet, with his long coat swishing behind him, causing him to look a bit like a vulture swooping around its prey.

“What?” Lestrade asked, looking alarmed at the physical manifestation of Sherlock’s epiphany.

“These murders were not committed by a single person!” Sherlock declared.

Lestrade opened his mouth to ask for elaboration, but Sherlock was already ahead of him.

“While there are probably some people in the world who do possess the skills to both kill and perform such an operation, why would you look for one person who can, by chance, do both of these highly skilled things when you could find two. It was likely that a trained assassin killed the victims, and then brought the bodies to be altered by another person! I mean, you’ve probably checked this scene and the other two thoroughly. There is nothing to indicate that the victims were killed here. No marks in the wall from the bullet, no traces of blood that indicate fatality. These are old cement floors, highly porous, it would be incredibly hard to remove all traces of blood if it were spilled here. Even if you soaked the floor in bleach for an extended period of time, you’d have noticed the bleach stain. And there is no evidence these floors have been painted over recently. The man could have been killed over a tarp or something, but then that would have likely involved him being dragged here still alive. That level of kidnapping and criminal organization would likely be out of the level of skill of our doctor.

“No, he wasn’t killed here. But the operation could have easily occurred here. The building is in the middle of a remodel, so it’s still secure. But they’ve had trouble with payment, correct? So work has been temporarily halted, leaving the building vacant. It’s a perfectly reasonable place to operate on a dead man, and I’m sure there have been small traces of blood and skin tissue, in smaller amounts than a murder of course, around the bodies.”

“But why couldn’t it be one person? You said yourself that there are people that could do both. With John’s medical and military background, he’d fit the bill just fine, as well as likely any other army doctor,” Lestrade pointed out.

“Because it’s Moriarty. He organizes people, recruits teams, and likely has his own team of preferred assassins. Now why would he go out and look for a single man to recruit when he could find people who are absolutely the best at what they do, instead of one person who is mediocre at both things. Plus, doctors in general have a thing against killing, it being their job to save lives. Of course there are bad doctors, but this was done by a very good doctor. And again, the chance of finding a doctor who is amoral enough to not only kill without any purpose but be coerced into such a, as John so aptly described, bastardized, version of medicine, that would be hard.”

“Coerced?” John interrupted, his voice cracking.

“What?” Sherlock paused, retracing what he’d said. “Oh, yes, well doctors being moral and all that, but also Moriarty’s want for the best. I imagine that the doctor was threatened, and even then could have likely only have agreed once he learned that his patient would already be dead. The pool of doctors who would fall to blackmail or threats is far larger than that of doctors who could be paid off to commit such a crime or do it for fun. Someone involved in the study could have been approached as well, someone who had desperately wanted human test subjects. But that still confirms the need for this murder to involve at least a pair.”

“So, where does this put us, then, with a suspect?” John asked carefully.

“Well, I imagine we should track down that medical journal of yours and interview all the doctors and researchers who took part, as they would be the experts in such a procedure.”

“Yes, alright. Well, it’s at least some place to start. Even if they weren’t a part of it, they might know of someone who requested information or otherwise expressed interest,” Lestrade responded, now dialing his mobile, clearly beginning to take action.

“John, can I use your phone?” Sherlock looked over at John suddenly, who had gone back to observing his shoes.

“What happened to yours?”

“The battery had run out and I left it charging.”

John groaned, but handed his mobile over to Sherlock. Sherlock pressed the button to turn on the screen, but then remembering that John had turned it off earlier, held down the power button. The phone responded and after a moment Sherlock had opened the phones internet browser to begin doing research on the graft study, when John’s phone vibrated and a text came in.

Sherlock read the message and looked up at John. John was staring back in horror. Sherlock looked back down at the text.

_I need to see you. You know where._

It wasn’t signed, but Sherlock supposed it didn’t need to be.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

“This is why you’ve been avoiding me, hasn’t it? Because you’re seeing someone else? You’re,” Sherlock struggled to even form the word. It felt out of place as he tried to form it in his mouth, as he tried to think about it in relation to John. _His_ John, “ _Cheating_ on me?” Sherlock’s mind worked frantically to put all the pieces together. “Wait, no, it’s the other way around, isn’t it? That’s why you kept hesitating. Because you were already with someone else. You cheated on them, _with me_.”

Sherlock couldn’t believe it. John. Loyal, kind, stubborn, proud John, committing adultery. His John, betraying him. But it fit then, didn’t it? The text messages, the avoidance, the hesitation. All this time he’d been trying to protect John from Moriarty, when John probably was only feeling guilty for betraying his other partner.

“You two are finally shagging?” Lestrade’s completely unnecessary comment came echoing through Sherlock’s mind.

Yes, they had  _finally_  been shagging. But apparently he’d been too late. John had committed himself to someone else and couldn’t even bring himself to tell Sherlock.

Somewhere along the way John’s horror had morphed into confusion. He had closed the distance between himself and Sherlock and snatched the phone back, reading the text that Sherlock had read. The horror crossed his face again, but his brow remained furrowed.

Just then, his phone vibrated again. Both John and Sherlock peered down to read the message. 

_Now, Johnny._

“I’ve got to go,” John murmured, snatching the phone from Sherlock, clicking the phones screen off abruptly, and shoving it in his pocket.

“So that’s all it takes, then. One text and you go running off to your other lover, _Johnny.”_ Sherlock spat the nickname and John flinched violently.

“What’s going on?” Lestrade asked.

“What, you don’t know, you’ve been rather amiable drinking buddies recently!” Sherlock growled, wondering who else had been lying to him.

“I haven’t been to the pub with John in months.”

And then it hit Sherlock, the extent of John’s deceit.

“No, I don’t suppose you have.”

“Look, Sherlock, I really have to go. But it’s not what you think it is, alright. _You’re wrong about this.”_

Sherlock wasn’t sure if the last sentence was supposed to be reassuring, but it was hissed with so much determination that for a second Sherlock believed him. But then Sherlock remembered that their entire relationship was a lie. They were just fucking, weren’t they? John had been using him. How had Sherlock gotten it so wrong? How had he gotten everything so wrong?

He felt like his brain was breaking, like his mind palace was collapsing. What was the point of being so clever if he had missed the only thing that ever truly mattered?

Sherlock watched as John left, letting him go without another word.

“What did the message say?” Lestrade asked softly.

“John was being summoned. Rather insistently. _Now, Johnny_ , was apparently all it takes.”

“Johnny? I didn’t think John was the kind of man to stand for such a demeaning nickname,” Lestrade said, once again being unhelpful.

“Yes, well clearly none of us knew John as well as we had thought.”

Sherlock was already convinced. He knew nothing about John. Nothing at all.

It didn’t matter though, he had a case to solve, and he was going to prove to himself that he didn’t need John to do it. He had made a mistake, a horrible mistake, but he refused to make another one.

 


	3. The Pendulum

John quickly exited the warehouse and began to make his way down the street, trying to find his way to Camden High Street in hopes of finding an Underground Station. It was useless trying to hail a cab at this end of the neighborhood, in the middle of the afternoon and a weekday none the less, and he didn’t have time to call and wait for one. It had always been Sherlock who had an aversion to the tube, anyway, John had never minded it.

John shook his head, trying to shake Sherlock out of his mind.

He eventually found Mornington Crescent and got himself on a train on the Northern line going south. He needed to be in Canary Wharf, probably an hour ago. The messages he'd received had actually been sent right after he'd turned off his phone. The train seemed to take ages, and John grew increasingly antsy. He wasn’t supposed to be needed until tomorrow night. Nothing good could possibly come out of the fact that he was being summoned spontaneously.

He tried to hurry as he made the transfer at Waterloo, but his leg had been acting up again since the incident with Moriarty. He’d been trying his best to hide it from Sherlock, and had by no small miracle succeeded. But right now his leg was aching horribly as he limped along. At least his tremor hadn’t come back, thank God. He wasn’t sure what he would have possibly done if that had happen.

Or, more likely, been done to him.

Finally, after another five stops, John was above ground again. He was supposed to be on a boat that was docked on the Isle of Dogs side of South Dock. A sense of foreboding began to fill John’s stomach as he got closer to the water. A the smallest, tiniest of voices in the back of his mind told him he was going to his death, but he pushed the thought away. No use getting worked up about it now. 

The look of anger and betrayal in Sherlock’s eyes had been too much. He wanted to pretend that he still was following the commands of the text messages because he needed to protect London, his family, friends, and most importantly Sherlock from Moriarty. Weeks ago though when it became clear to John that he was only delaying all of their fates, giving Moriarty time to put a far more devastating plan into action, John pretended that he was at least doing it to buy Sherlock more time as well. But as he worked for Moriarty and saw the full extent of the man’s madness and genius, he began to lose faith in Sherlock. Sherlock was one man, determined to bring Moriarty down virtually entirely on his own. Moriarty, on the other hand, had countless numbers of people at his beck and call. John was just one tiny pawn. In a way, so was Sherlock. So then, John kept showing up for the purposes of self-preservation. He began to hope that he could just maybe keep himself alive long enough to maybe find a way out.

Today though, he was going because he deserved whatever Moriarty had plans for him, no matter what that was. If it was his turn to be a faceless body, John wasn’t sure if he should bother fighting it.

He didn’t know when his sense of purpose in life and his value in the world had become so tied up in Sherlock. Perhaps it was because Sherlock had come waltzing into his life at the same time he was seriously considering firing his Browning into his brain. He was sure his old therapist would have had something to say about how Sherlock was an unhealthy coping mechanism.

But now he’d lost Sherlock. And without Sherlock, John had nearly nothing. He had a crap alcoholic sister and a job that some weeks was barely even part time that he was significantly overqualified for. He had a small collection of bad jumpers, and he had a gun.

And now he had a job, as a criminal. An accessory to murder. A human butcher.

The second he’d agreed, the second he hadn’t told Sherlock everything once he was away from Moriarty, he’d transferred his life from Sherlock to Moriarty.

And Moriarty was not going to let John survive.

It nearly killed him, every single time he had remembered this the past two weeks that he had been with Sherlock.

John had made his way to the boat. It was a narrowboat that had at one point been converted into a houseboat, but the charming wooden boat seemed to have been beaten down by the metallic industry of Canary Wharf. Chipped paint and splintering wood, stuffed into a small corner of dock space in the shadow or a luxury apartment complex, the boat looked ready to capsize at any moment. It's windows had been blacked out with paper, making the boat all the more ominous.

John boarded the boat and headed inside, quickly making his way down the short stairway that lead down into the body of the boat.

“You’re late, Watson,” a gruff voice snapped at him the second he reached the bottom step and found himself in the dimly lit main room for the boat. A man was sat in a particularly dark corner, going previously unnoticed by John.“The boss is mad.”

“Sorry, I had to go supervise my handiwork to keep a certain consulting detective off my case,” John snapped in reply, looking at the muscular assassin and first in command for Moriarty that was Sebastian Moran. Whenever he was around Moran, he slipped into the soldier version of John Watson. The version of John Watson who could be cold and clinical, who was everything that the regular old jumper wearing John Watson was thought never to be. It was easier this way, to accept his place as a part of Moriarty’s game, instead of scampering around like a frightened rabbit trapped in a box, running into walls in panicked desperation, which is what John felt like on the inside.

“I heard that went badly,” Moran scoffed.

John had been working very hard to ignore the fact that it seemed that Moriarty knew every move John made over the past few weeks, and he wasn’t going to dwell on how Moriarty already knew the fallout of something that had happened barely an hour ago.

“He still doesn’t have a clue about either of us yet, thanks very much. He basically thinks I’m fucking Jim,” John rolled his eyes.

“Oh, only in Sherlock’s best dreams does he even dare to imagine such things.” John heard Moriarty’s voice before he saw the man slip out from behind a door at the end of the boat. “Do you care to join me, John, I’ve done a bit of remodeling, and have something I want you to try out.”

John followed Moriarty into the small room at the back of the boat that had last week been an office. Now it was completely bare except for a set of chains that hung from the ceiling and a trunk against the back wall. No light made it in past the thick paper that was gaffer taped over the windows, and the only light came from a dim yellow ceiling light that occasionally flickered tauntingly. 

John took a moment to close his eyes and focus on regulating his breathing.

“I asked Seb to come along to help, just in case you’re suddenly feeling a bit rebellious today, but I don’t imagine that I’ll even need him just yet. You’ll let yourself be shackled and hung from the ceiling just because I ask you to, won’t you Johnny-boy?” Moriarty was so unnecessarily close to John now, he could whisper the words in his ear as he stood behind John. His fingers traced along the back of John’s shoulders and then across his chest to rub a hand across John’s collar bone. Then his hands were suddenly on John’s back and John was shoved forwards, away from him and towards the center of the room.

“Let your _partner_ tie you up Johnny-boy!” Moriarty giggled ferociously while Moran took a step towards John. John raised his hands in the air and bowed his head, letting Moran attach leather cuffs to his wrists, tugging the chains through a pulley so that John was left dangling, arms wide in a spread eagle crucifixion-like sort of position, bound wrists nearly against the ceiling, his toes just barely scraping the floor as his body stretched to fill the space between low ceilings of the narrowboat. Moriarty was lucky that John was below average height.

“You have done so well, Johnny, but unfortunately your usefulness has almost run out. I only have one more thing I need from you,” Moriarty said. John said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say anymore. There hadn’t been since that night three weeks ago. Moriarty had been right.

“He hasn’t figured it out yet, but he’s going to, you know. I bet it’ll only take him all of about 24 hours,” Moriarty paced leisurely back and forth in front of John. John followed his feet, refusing to raise his head and risk meeting the madman’s gaze.

“But you’ve lost hope in him, haven’t you Johnny? Would you like to bet 48, just in case?”

John said nothing.

“Alright. I’ll set a timer then. Sherlock has 48 hours to figure it out, and decide whether or not he forgives you are wants to rescue you. I think that that’s plenty of time, if Sherlock really _loves_ you, don’t you think Johnny?”

It probably would be enough time, if there were any chance that Sherlock was going to miss John, to want to forgive him. But he wasn’t going to. He heard beeping and raised his eyes just enough to see Moriarty fiddling with a large digital clock on the wall right across from him. The clock beeped one more time and a countdown began.

“48 hours from now though, and not a moment more, this boat is going to sink into the Thames.” John felt an involuntary wave of panic and nausea surge through him as the concept of his impending death officially became real.

“Oh, don’t worry John. I’ve even left clues for Sherlock to come find you, if he wants. They’re hard clues, of course, if your DI friend or that meddling other Holmes brother decide to take pity on you and try to find you, even just for the sake of a belief in justice at the hands of the courts after Sherlock tells them what you’ve done, they won’t be able to get to you. Only Sherlock can. And if he does, I won’t try and stop him. He won’t even see me. He can have you back and I’ll never try to separate you two love birds again. In fact, either way I plan to disappear a while. Everyone needs a holiday every now and then. The second you hit the water, it’ll be like I never existed. What will Sherlock do then? Without me or you? He’ll go bored out of his mind won’t he? And whatever will he do? Oh! Do you think he’ll turn back to the drugs? Do you think he’ll finally manage to kill himself? Do you think you’ll be the last thought on his mind before he loses consciousness as he overdoses?”

John still said nothing. Sherlock was stronger than that. He didn’t need John and there would be other criminal masterminds. He wasn’t worried about what would happen to Sherlock after he was gone. Mycroft and Lestrade would look out for him, so would Molly and Ms. Hudson. Sherlock had other people that he cared about and who cared about him, even if he was hesitant to admit it. Sherlock would be just fine. He had to be.

“Oh, Johnny. Ever so stoic. Here you are, awaiting your execution and you’ve become so resigned? You don’t have any hope? You don’t think that there is even just the smallest possibility that I’m wrong?”

Moriarty was laughing again.

“No, Johnny, you don’t, do you? I’ve broken you and I hardly even had to try.”

John then, with all the pride he used to have, mustered the energy to thrust his body forwards. At first the chains that held him up rattled deliciously, sounding his rebellion. But then John was swinging backwards with his toes dragging across the floor, his body swaying slightly as he tried to balance himself on his toes.

He could tell how pathetic he looked when he finally dared to look up to see Moriarty grinning at him.

“Oh, of course, I apologize. I didn’t break you. You were broken long before I ever came along. Sherlock was just a plaster, wasn’t he? Just enough to hold you together and keep out dirty nightmares. But you’re a doctor John, you should know that wounds don’t heal when they’re infected.”

John groaned. He felt nauseated at even the mention of a wound. The first time he’d gone out with Sherlock on a case, Sherlock had asked him if he wanted to see more. Well he didn’t, not anymore. No more injuries. No more violent deaths. No more trouble.

And then he realized just how profound Moriarty’s victory over him was. Even if by a miracle Sherlock forgave him, John would be useless to him. Depressed, anxious, terrified at the thought of blood and torn skin. He couldn’t be a doctor anymore, could he, even if he managed to escape on his own? No. Probably not. So now all John had was jumpers and a gun. And Moriarty had taken away the need for the gun as well. Just jumpers. That was all he had left. Although Sherlock could easily be burning them in the fireplace right now. So he had the jumper he was wearing, at least.

That’s all he was now. A beige jumper. A beige jumper that also happened to have a mustard stain along the bottom hem. Brilliant.

The worst thing was, Sherlock already knew that he was coerced. He knew that he hadn’t killed anyone. But Sherlock was stubborn. He had seen Sherlock’s hatred for John take its hold over Sherlock before he walked away this afternoon. Sherlock already thought he had the answer. He wouldn’t look for opposing data. He almost wished that he had been the assassin instead of the doctor.

All Moran had done was shoot a couple men through the head, and then delivered their bodies to various make shift operating theatres around the city. They weren’t very good men, in fact, they were criminals, Moriarty’s pawns that had run out of usefulness. John had already disposed of one of Moriarty’s pawns before, when he’d killed the cabbie. He had never felt guilty for that, not even for a second, because he had been protecting Sherlock.

But Moriarty hadn’t asked John to protect Sherlock with a gun.

What he’d done was so much worse, so much more horrific.

He had ripped the hair from the corpses, taking hours to make sure every last follicle was removed. That was the first day all on its own. John would tell Sherlock he had to work and then was going to the pub, but really he’d been removing a dead criminal’s pubic hair in an empty warehouse in Camden Town or Stratford or Barbican. But that was nothing compared to the second day, when he’d have to come back and finish the job. He’d use acid to burn off the finger prints, watching the chemicals burned through the skin, even begin to eat away at the hard finger nails. Then he would pull out their teeth and eyes, and would saw off the cartilage of their nose and ears.  And then finally he'd pour acid over the head, leaving it to dissolve until you started to see bone. 

Only then could he wrap skull in a thick layer of skin that he’d cut from another corpses back, carefully stitching the skin graft into place, wiping away any other chance they had of being identifiable.

Moran may have taken those men’s lives, but John had to carefully rip away the rest of them.

Maybe what he needed to feel clean again would be to plunge into the river.

“We have 47 hours and 49 minutes still Johnny. Don’t you think we should have some fun in the mean time?”

John couldn’t help but cringe instantly at the implication.

“I’m not a big fan of getting my hands dirty, which is why Sebby’s still here. But I do want, in case they manage to fish your body out of the river, and I hope they do, for Sherlock to know that I’ve left my mark on you.” Moriarty approached John with a switch blade in his hand.

“Sebby's going to want a slightly larger canvas though to work with. I might as well help him along.” Moriarty cocked his head to the side and stuck out the tip of his tongue in concentration as he pulled Johns jumper away from his chest and ran the blade down the middle, splitting it open. He then reached up above John, cutting the sleeves, before giving a fierce tug that caused the jumper to fall on the floor.

John officially had nothing.

He stared at the ground, defeated. For a second it crossed his mind to spit on Moriarty’s shoes, but the urge quickly receded.

“LOOK AT ME!” Moriarty suddenly screamed at John, completely unprovoked. John snapped his head up reflexively.

“The work that you’ve done is going to be quite prolific, I do hope you know. I have granted you a very exciting death Johnny. You have to admit that’s what you wanted. Why you were hesitant to end things before. Being shot, self-inflicted or otherwise is soo bor-ing,” Moriarty sang. “But this, Johnny-boy is an awfully exciting way to die, don’t you think? To be tortured and sunk to the bottom of the Thames after having fled from your guilt over having taken part in some of the most disturbing serial murders London has ever seen. That’s beyond interesting.”

Moriarty ran the blade teasingly along Johns jaw.

“You cut off their faces, John.” Moriarty’s voice was rough, coming from deep within his throat. The blade stopped dancing along John’s jaw then, and cut deep into the skin at the corner of his ear. John screwed his eyes shut and held his breath while Moriarty cut along John’s jaw, stopping at the corner of his chin.

“Oh Johnny I do love how _strong_ you are,” Moriarty whispered, now dragging his finger through the blood that oozed from the wound on John’s face. He suddenly disappeared behind John and John tensed, know that whatever was going to come next couldn’t be good.

“But you know what I want. I want redemption, for those men that you defiled. You’d agree they deserve it, don’t you? They never did anything except for their jobs. And it’s certainly not my fault that they ran out of purpose. But you _burned_ them. I’m doing to redeem them, Johnny. All of them John, not just the ones whose faces you ruined. I WANT TO HEAR YOU SCREAM!”

Something wet hit John’s back. At first John was confused, but then the agony began as acid burned into the skin of his back.

John couldn’t have stopped the wail of absolute agony and surprise that spilled out of his mouth even if he’d wanted to.

“I’ll rinse you down in a minute, Johnny, but keep screaming for me, why don’t you?”

John’s initial scream had faded into groans and grunts, but this still seemed to please Moriarty, who stood before John again grinning.

“Did you make noises like this for Sherlock, Johnny? I know we haven’t talked about that aspect of your relationship with him before, but we all know you were fucking,” Moriarty remained grinning, but his eyes grew dark. “Or were at least building up to it anyway, you sweet innocent things.” John felt a rush of cold on his back and realized that Moran must have dumped water on it in a less than halfhearted attempt to wash off the chemicals. But John was having an easier time ignoring the searing in his back since he was beginning to feel rage boiling in the pit of his stomach.

Moriarty had taken everything from him. Everything. But he could not make a mockery of the time that he and Sherlock had spent together, however brief it was. Moriarty had no right to know about anything he and Sherlock had or hadn’t done sexually. He hoped to God that this was just a good guess on Moriarty’s part, because if he’d planted anything in their bedroom, John would survive just so that he could strangle Moriarty. Or maybe castrate him.

“Were you having a hard time fighting it out for who gets to top?” Moriarty taunted, and John found it within himself to growl at him.

“Don’t you dare, you know nothing of our relationship! Don’t pretend that you do. I’ve been around Sherlock long enough to know that half of his deductions are just guesses. Don’t pretend for a second that you were ever even remotely a part of that part of our lives.”

He had been wrong about the jumper. It wasn’t the last thing John had. John had the memories of his time with Sherlock. He had made those memories when he had no right to, having already agreed to betray Sherlock. But they were his anyway. He had those few moments where Moriarty hadn’t managed to wedge himself in between them by causing John to get lost in the guilt or Sherlock to become too controlling and protective. And just because they’d been taking things slow, did not negate their relationship. They weren’t married and it wasn’t the 18th century. Their relationship was valid whether or not they consummated it with penetrative sex, dammit.

John had had a lot of not good in his life. But Sherlock had been something good. And even if it was over now, that didn’t negate it.

“Oh, look, I’ve struck a nerve, but I’ve found Doctor John Watson again, haven’t I? Good, you were getting so boring.” Moriarty grinned. “Well, unfortunately I have other obligations,” he sighed dramatically. “But I’m glad to see you’ve got some fight back. Seb,” Moran stepped out from behind John and gave Moriarty a curt nod, “Break him again for me, will you?” Moriarty smiled sweetly and Moran grinned viciously. “See you later! Or, no I won’t.” Moriarty’s grin continued to grow. “Have a fun death, Johnny-boy. I hope that it’s everything you hoped it would be.”

Then Moriarty slid out the room, slamming the door behind him. John turned to glare at Moran.

“Do you worst,” John growled, realizing the man seemed to have a tool belt full of what would surely end up being torture devices strapped to his waist.

“Oh, I plan on it Watson,” Moran smirked, pulling a whip out of his belt and smacking John harshly across the chest with it. “We’ll start off slow,” Moran snapped the whip again, leaving a second welt across John’s chest. Several more fell and John stubbornly refused to make a noise.

“Oh, I think I’ve teased you enough,” Moran grinned devilishly before he stepped behind John and began smacking the whip repeatedly against John’s chemically burned back. John had managed to survive the first hit before he was screaming. He lost count of how many times Moran snapped the whip against his already damaged skin, but eventually he passed out.

John woke up to notice that the clock had ticked its way down the 42 hours. He quickly shut his eyes and tried to stay still, hoping not to alert Moran to his return to consciousness. He wondered what Sherlock was doing right now. Had he already figured out that John was the doctor? Did he hate John for giving into Moriarty and doing something so awful instead of trusting Sherlock to get him out of it? It didn’t matter anymore, John supposed. He imagined that he would spend the next 42 hours drifting in and out of consciousness as his body shut down in response to the torture Moran would continue to inflict. Then the boat would sink into the Thames and water would fill his lungs and it would all be over with.

But Moriarty had told John he was going off grid for a while, so maybe his life wouldn’t be for naught. He’d have bought Sherlock more time, and that was what mattered.

“Watson, I know you’re awake. Ready for round two, soldier?” at Moran’s voice John took the opportunity to let out a groan that he’d been holding in and he snapped open his eyes.

“Personally, I’m the kind of man who likes to pull out teeth or finger nails, or maybe even skip right to cutting off entire fingers. But boss said I couldn’t dismember you in any way, fuck if I know why. so I’ve brought something else to play with."

Moran held up a blow torch which flicked on with a hiss. John held his breath. Moran began to dance the flame across his chest. He never held the flame too close or on any one spot too long, but he’d still have second degree burns, not that he’d live long enough for it to matter. It wasn’t even so bad, at first, as far as he imagined torture went. He involuntarily strained his body as he tried to get himself away from the searing pain of the flame, but he didn’t scream. And Moran didn’t touch his back. John was beginning to wonder it Moran would grow bored, and what he was going to do next. But apparently even a man like Moran who was trained in inflicting suffering couldn’t come up with a full 48 hours’ worth of torture, because after about 20 minutes of playing with the flame across John’s skin, Moran switched off the flame and punched John in the face. Darkness quickly descended.

When he woke up again the clock was down to 38 hours. Moran was nowhere in sight, but John realized that his shoulder was killing him. Having been hung for ten hours, his old injury had been agitated and it felt like his shoulder was trying to rip itself apart. John tried to reposition himself, seeing if he could put any more weight on his toes, but no relief came.

The pain in his shoulder quickly became worse than that inflicted by the blow torch, and after an hour he started screaming.

He felt his voice beginning to grow horse when finally the door of the room slammed open and Moran came storming in.

“Look, I have other things to do right now besides tend to you, and you’re certainly not allowed to be having this much fun without me.”

He raised a syringe for John to see briefly before plunging the needle into the base of John’s neck. John felt the world fade to black.

The next time he woke up, the clock read 27 hours. He considered what kind and what dose of sedative would be enough to keep him under for that long, but John didn’t particularly care. It wasn’t exactly as if he had wanted to savor his remaining time on earth. Plus, his shoulder wasn’t killing him anymore.

It was then he realized that the boat was moving. Moran must have been moving the boat into position. Moriarty had mentioned that John would die in the river, and while the water surrounding Canary Wharf did belong to the Thames, it didn’t exactly have the dramatic image of a boat sliding under the water line with Parliament in the background that John had imagined when Moriarty had first described his fate. The man after all was all about theatrics. He also then realized that the clues Moriarty said he’d left for Sherlock probably had to lead somewhere, and again, for theatrical purposes, that probably wasn’t the docks. For a moment hope surged through John. Even if it wasn’t Sherlock, maybe if the boat went down publicly, he’d stand a chance at rescue. But he quickly stamped the hope away. If there was any hope, he’d rather be pleasantly surprised then disappointed.

He felt the boat come to a stop, and a few minutes later the door swung open.

“Alright Watson, I’ve got to abandon ship, just in case Sherlock shows up, even though we both know he won’t.  Boats been anchored. Boss has taken care of everything else so you’re not going to be boarded by the Met or anything for violations, don’t get your hopes up. The ships rigged to go down right when that timer hits zero, but we’re not blowing it up or anything, so it will probably take some time for it to sink. You’re not gonna be sitting here for hours with water around your ankles or anything, but you’ll have just enough time for the terror of your own impending mortality to fuck with your mind.  But I’ve got one more gift for you before I leave,” Moran grinned, “And you get to help me pick it out.”

Moran reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife.

“So tell me, doctor, where can I stab you that will hurt like hell and cause you to bleed something awful, but won’t kill you before the boat goes down? And don’t lie just to end it early. The boss will know and rethink his holiday.”

“Anywhere on the torso is probably your best bet,” John told him matter-of-factly. 

Moran poked Johns side with his knife just below the ribs. The wound might nick the spleen, but otherwise was likely to clear any more essential organ. 

“How about here?” Moran asked.

“I can’t think of any anatomical reason why not,” John said trying to seem ambivalent.

Moran pulled back before jabbing the knife into John, and left it there. Well at least he wouldn't get the joy of quickly bleeding out, although the wound was still beginning to bleed furiously around he knife.

“Well, it’s been fun mate,” Moran nodded at John before exiting the room.

Whatever Moran had given him earlier seemed to be wearing off. His back was beginning to sting and his shoulder was currently as a dull ache.

After spending some time involuntarily running an inventory of his injuries, John realized that he was alone, and that he was going to die, and that he would in fact have to let those facts stew in his mind for an entire day. John slowly began to work himself into a panic as he considered it, but thankfully the panic combined with the blood loss caused him to lose consciousness again.

He spent most of his last day drifting in and out of consciousness. Occasionally he’d keep himself awake for an hour or two at a time. At first he tried to think about anything but what drowning felt like.

Eventually though, he let his mind wander and it ended up on Sherlock.

He pictured the consulting detective running his hands across his now marred cheek and over his now ruined back. He imagined Sherlock kissing his neck, which was now coated in blood from the wound Moriarty inflicted along his jaw. He thought about him whispering endearments into his ear. He thought about him laughing. He thought about his face, smile crinkling to the corners of those bright eyes. Eventually consciousness and unconsciousness all blended together into a Sherlock Holmes themed fever dream.

Distantly, John thought he heard a noise that sounded like am alarm going off, but then again he also thought he could feel Sherlock nuzzling his neck.

Then, however, John realized that water was pooling at his ankles, and that the boat was going down.

Sherlock hadn’t made it.

 _I’m sorry John_ , John thought he heard Sherlock’s voice whisper in his ear as the water rose. Soon it was up to his chest, then his neck. John gulped in a breath of air right before it covered his mouth.

 _It’s alright, Sherlock_. John thought in return. _I love you_.


	4. The Numbers

“What do you mean, none of them know anything?” Sherlock snarled at Lestrade.

Sherlock had returned to Baker Street and spent all afternoon and evening after leaving the crime scene yesterday trying to just get a moment of clarity to understand, but there seemed to be some sort of barrier he couldn’t get past. There was something he was missing, some connection that he hadn’t made. It didn’t help that it appeared that the Yard hadn’t even been able to come up with a single suspect.

Lestrade had finally pulled him out of his mind palace to tell him that it was now early afternoon the next day and there were some more pressing matters at hand, but so far it seemed that in fact there were not, since Lestrade didn’t appear to have any leads.

“There were only two researchers plus a couple student assistants involved in that study. All of them seemed horrified, frankly that their research had been used in such a way, and given the fact that they are all Americans who have never crossed the Atlantic, it seems like they all have a good alibi. I honestly think we’re just lucky they even got back to us so quickly,” Lestrade informed Sherlock.

“So are you just completely useless to me?” Sherlock snapped. He began pacing back and forth across the room, wishing he could get himself to _think._

“Oi, hold on. The medical journal that the study was published in agreed to give us a list of their subscribers, to run the names through our system to see if anyone has any criminal background. We also did a search of them just to check and see if any of them have the kind of level of notoriety that might draw Moriarty’s attention.”

“And?”

“Well it is an American journal, so we were able to rule out a lot of people who might have the skill set after checking with immigration. There were a couple subscribers who are doctors from the UK or other near enough parts of Europe who are well respected, who have families and children that would make their manipulation on Moriarty’s hand easy,”

“So you do have suspects! Why are you always so slow? Have you brought them in for questioning yet?” Sherlock asked, stopping his pacing to climb up into his chair like a cat and perch, hands steepled to think about the new information.

“Wait Sherlock, I haven’t finished. None of them are surgeons.” Sherlock ignored Lestrade and crouched quietly for a few minutes. Then his eyes widened with a sudden realization and he flung himself up from the chair again continued to wear down the rug.

“Maybe I was wrong about the coercion, or at least the level to which it was done. Perhaps we should consider the possibilities of criminals who might have coincidentally trained as surgeons. But no wait, if I were Moriarty, and I wanted a surgeon, how would I go about it? Yes, that’s what we should do! I’ll just think like Moriarty. I hadn’t considered such an amateur approach with Moriarty because I assumed he’d account for my usual deduction methods and make his decisions with a level of randomness to counteract them, but maybe that was the wrong assumption. He likes things that are a bit like kismet, doesn’t he? So it shouldn’t be too difficult. Moriarty doesn’t want to commit the perfect crime, after all, at least not at this stage. That would be far too boring.” Sherlock had gotten up from his chair and was pacing again, his mind already set up on the new plan that _Lestrade_ had inspired in him just fine.

“Sherlock, hold on, we do have a suspect, but I need you to sit down, or at least stop pacing.”

Sherlock halted to look at Lestrade. His face looked soft, like he was going to have to give Sherlock some bad news, and Sherlock realized that there was a foreboding hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

 _Just hunger_ , he told himself, despite never having allowed himself to use such an excuse before _. Maybe have some tea soon._

“Sherlock, have you heard from John since he left the crime scene yesterday?”

Sherlock felt a chill run through him.

“No,” he scoffed. “He’s made it very clear he needs nor wants anything from me.” Sherlock folded his arms across his chest and sat down in his arm chair with a huff, casting a glare at John’s chair across from him.

“Nothing at all? He didn’t even come by to pick up some things?”

“I suppose I could have not noticed if he did, but I imagine he’s got everything he needs wherever it is that he went already.”

“Sherlock, are you sure that John, er, cheated on you?” Lestrade said hesitantly.

“You saw the texts come in,” Sherlock huffed. “It all makes sense.”

He didn’t wanted to talk about John. John had nothing to do with his life anymore.

“But does it Sherlock? Who would John be cheating on you with?”

That was the question that Sherlock’s mind had kept coming back to all night. But an answer never presented itself to him and he really didn’t want to think about it. It didn’t matter who it was. It could have been anyone. John was likable, he could have met someone at any time, at the shop, or maybe a patient at work. Maybe he'd just accidentally bumped into someone on the street and said something charming and let it slip that he was both a doctor _and_ a soldier and instantly won some strangers heart despite his stupid, adorable, jumpers. 

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe, maybe it would help the case move along if we could just close that door.” Lestrade suggested carefully. “Get that mystery out of the way. Why don’t you call the surgery and ask if John’s mentioned anyone? You said he had been using the pub to cover up his affair, maybe whoever it was stopped by the surgery to pick him up.”

Sherlock sighed. He didn’t understand how this could be helpful, but since he had nothing else to go on with the Moriarty case and he was too distracted by John to be able to think clearly, he supposed it at least couldn’t hurt.

Sherlock pulled his mobile out of his pocket and dialed the number of the surgery. He hated talking on the phone, but he was not going to give this little errand the importance of going down the surgery in person, and the matter was far too pressing to wait for an email to be answered.

“Hello, yes, is this Sarah?” Sherlock said recognizing the voice on the other end of the line while the surgery’s generic greeting was delivered.

“Yes, Sherlock?” the Doctor clearly recognized Sherlock’s voice immediately as well.

“Has John mentioned anyone new in his life recently?” Sherlock asked, cutting straight to the point.

“What, like you don’t know. Or did he not tell you he told me? Or are you testing him and I shouldn't have told you he told me? He did seem really hesitant to. He’d seemed really off, you know, kind of skittish, his leg had been bothering him again. But when he told me, oh, I don’t even care that we didn’t work out when he looked so happy.”

“Who, who has he been seeing? Who is she?” Sherlock demanded.

“ _She_? Is something wrong, Sherlock? Is John alright?”

Sherlock froze at her indication over the confusion over this other persons gender. Is that why he hadn't already been parading his new lover through the flat like he usually did before that day Sherlock had finally made a move? Was it because he had finally come to terms with his deviation from the normative sexuality with a man who wasn't Sherlock and hadn't been ready to come out to the flatmate he'd once clearly been pining for? That could make sense, but it didn't help make Sherlock feel any less sick.

“Of course John’s fine, more than fine, but I need a name, Sarah!” Sherlock was growing impatient. He didn’t want to hear about how happy John was, and certainly not with a man that wasn't him.

“You, Sherlock. He told me that you’d _finally_ gotten together. He was a bit shy about it, said you weren’t going public yet. Is something wrong, is John alright?”

“When? When did he tell you this?”

“Oh, about two weeks ago.”

“And he’s said nothing else since?”

“John hasn’t really been in since then. Sherlock, are you sure that everything’s alright?”

Sherlock heard her voice still come from the phone as he pulled it from his ear and hung up.

“John,” Sherlock breathed his name, his voice coarse. “Your suspect is John.” He looked up at Lestrade, hoping for any chance that the DI’s face would not confirm it, but there was nothing there except for sadness.

“The only thing keeping John from being a suspect is that he’s John. He's an excellent surgeon, or was before his injury and career change. He does subscribe to that medical journal. He has ties to Moriarty, technically. Since it doesn’t appear that he has an alibi anymore, also counting the fact that he’s missing now, makes him seem like the only real option.”

Sherlock didn’t like the look that he was reading on Lestrade’s face at all. It was sad, but not like he was sad himself exceptionally, more that he expected Sherlock to be sad. It was sympathy. It was pity.

And then, suddenly after the moment of delay as the information washed over him the connections clicked in his mind.

John was working with Moriarty.

John had mutilated the corpses.

He’d had to rip every physical thing that made a person who they were off if them. It had to of been gruesome. It had to of been violent.

It had been done for no reason other than to taunt him.

Soft spoken, proud, loyal, kind, John. His John.

But he wasn’t his John, was he? He’d been working with Moriarty.

Adrenaline junkie, sharp shooting, stubborn, bad ass soldier John. Highly trained, unassuming genius John. Monstrous John?

Sherlock suddenly found himself wishing that John had just been sleeping with someone else. It was far less a betrayal than this.

“Sherlock, are you okay?” Lestrade asked.

He heard Lestrade talking. Maybe to someone else? But he couldn’t bring himself to listen.

 _John betrayed you, John betrayed you, John betrayed you_.

“Little brother, I believe there are issues at hand, and we simply don’t have time for you to throw a fit.”

At Mycroft’s words, Sherlock snapped out of it.

“Mycroft! What are you doing here?” Sherlock snapped, walking over to his arm chair, stepping up onto it, and then crouching down to sit with his arms wrapped around his knees.

“Really Sherlock, we don’t have time for you to pout because you got something wrong. It happens to the best. What we need to do is find John. I’m worried about him.”

Sherlock furrowed his brow and felt anger and confusion rise up at his brother’s nearly uncharacteristic words.

“Worried about him? He’s been working with Moriarty! He’s an accessory to murder!”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade gasped.

“Oh, brother mine, do you really believe that?” Mycroft asked.

“Belief has nothing to do with this, it’s the truth. I’m not interested in wasting time on John, I want to bring down Moriarty. John is nothing in Moriarty’s network, just a tool for Moriarty to use!”

“That’s what I worry about, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “I fear that John may have run out of use, and that he may dispose of John, just as he had John and his partner disposed of the body that you saw.”

“Disposed of? Were those bodies’ former pawns of Moriarty?”

“That’s something else I was here to tell you Sherlock,” Lestrade interceded. “We can’t definitively ID all of the bodies, but this most recent body matches the build of an ex-con who we believe to have ties to Moriarty. We found that he had some reconstructive work done on his knee after a gunshot wound, and the serial numbers on the pins match those recorded in his medical records. Unfortunately the other bodies don’t have any similar surgical work done that could be used to identify them, but assuming that the bodies are all part of the pattern, which we’ve been assuming, it’s likely that the victims had similar backgrounds.”

“So go find John, bring him in for questioning to see if he can give us any information on Moriarty, and then process him accordingly. Bring me a file when you’ve finished that. I’m sure there is no need for you to be here anymore,” Sherlock said dismissively before he huffed again and released his knees, leaning over the coffee table to pick up a small dish of fingernails that he’d been observing for an experiment.

Silence fell over the room. Sherlock could tell that Lestrade and Mycroft were having some sort of silent conversation trying to figure out what should be done about him. But Sherlock didn’t need anything to be done about him, he needed them to leave him to his work.

“Sherlock, do you realize how cruel you’re being right now?” Lestrade finally said, and it was like a bomb exploding in Sherlock’s mind.

“Cruel? You want to talk about cruel? John has betrayed me! He led me to care about him, when the whole time he was working with Moriarty. He hid himself from me entirely, mutilating corpses into a way in which they were specifically designed to taunt me! _I_ am not the cruel one!” Sherlock erupted, jumping up from his chair.

He glared at Mycroft and Lestrade, fuming. They shared a glance before Lestrade finally spoke.

“Are you forgetting something, Sherlock? A key part of who the doctor was in your deductions yesterday? I don’t think you were wrong about that part, about why the doctor was doing what he did?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. They were talking to him like he was a child. But Sherlock stopped and traced through the deductions that he’d made yesterday at the crime scene, until he remembered.

 _He was coerced_.

Sherlock collapsed into his arm chair, his legs failing him. _Oh, John._

John, his John, being so very brave and strong. So very brave and strong when he really should not have been.

What has Moriarty done to him?

Sherlock’s mind began to spin. How had he been so foolish? How had he let his judgement become so clouded? Where had John gone yesterday? How long has he been missing? Sherlock tried to remember, tried to remember everything about John that would possibly help him understand. He remembered John knowing that the victims had been shot. He remembered the disgust in John’s voice as he described the procedure. He remembered John’s hesitance to go to the crime scene, in fact, his absolute refusal.

He remembered John’s pallor when Sherlock read the text messages that came into his phone. John had thought Sherlock had known then, hadn’t he? He assumed Sherlock would be disgusted with him, that he’d blow the whistle on him and have him dragged off to prison.

He remembered how he’d walked away, trying to tell Sherlock that he didn’t understand. That he was wrong.

And wrong Sherlock was. 

Then Sherlock’s mind kept sorting through memories, spiraling farther and farther back.

He remembered the looks on John’s face every time he went somewhere else, that place Sherlock hadn’t understood. He remembered how terrified John looked every time Moriarty was mentioned. He remembered John’s nightmares.

He remembered him begging Sherlock not to confess his feelings for him. He remembered John warning him that they might not work out.

Sherlock realized that John hadn’t been speaking hypothetically. He had known. He had known so much more than Sherlock and kept it from him, carrying the weighty knowledge all on his own, trying to keep it away from Sherlock.

And yesterday, he’d been called away, right into Moriarty’s hands, and he’d walked willingly. Sherlock had been spending weeks trying to protect John from Moriarty, but all along he’d already failed so profoundly. It was never Sherlock who’d been protecting John from Moriarty, it had been the other way around.

Why did John have to be so foolish and brave?

“Oh, God, John,” the wrecked words slipped from Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock looked back up at Mycroft and Lestrade then, springing into action. “How long has he been missing?”

Lestrade and Mycroft shared a relieved glance, although they still had far too much pity in their eyes for Sherlock’s liking.

“He left the scene at about 3 o’clock yesterday afternoon, so he’s been gone for about 22 hours,” Lestrade reported.

“And I assume you’d already tracked him using CCTV?” Sherlock looked at Mycroft.

“He took the tube from Mornington Crescent to Canary Wharf. We followed him out the station heading north, but afterwards we lose him.”

“Well why aren’t we on our way to Canary Wharf?” Sherlock snapped, flying up from his seat.

Lestrade muttered something that sounded like “throw a fit” and “some genius you are” but Sherlock instead chose to ignore him to grab his coat and fly down the stairs to hail a cab.

Nearly an hour later, thanks to a tedious amount of traffic Sherlock stood outside the Canary Wharf underground station, and he started heading north. Lestrade hadn’t arrived yet, and he didn’t expect Mycroft to come along, this being a bit too close to the kind of field work he despised. 

Crowds of people rushed around him, in and out of the station. None of them had any idea what had been happening. They didn’t know that Moriarty threatened their lives. They certainly didn’t know that he had already destroyed Sherlock’s.

He realized then just how alone he felt without John. Of course, being alone wasn’t something unfamiliar to Sherlock. But since John, well, he’d rarely been alone unless he’d specifically wanted to be. But now after all that time with John by his side, it was strange to be alone and left him feeling empty.

And the empty feeling, Sherlock knew, definitively was not hunger.

He briskly continued north, trying to take in anything and everything along the way. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but there had to be something that screamed John.

It turns out it wasn’t something that screamed John, but rather something that screamed “ _Sherlock.”_

His name slid across an LED message display board that was hung around the first floor window of one the towering, dark buildings, It was the kind that probably was usually used to list off changes in the stock market, certainly not the names of London based detectives.

“ _You’ve just missed him.”_

The sign read and Sherlock froze. Missed him? Where had he been? Where was he going? What was going to happen to him? Had they been keeping him somewhere nearby but just transported him somewhere else? Or did that indicate something more morbid?

No, he couldn’t think like that. Moriarty was cruel. Terribly, terribly, cruel, but he wasn’t that kind of cruel. John was the one thing that Moriarty would likely ever have as real leverage against Sherlock, and if he intended to kill John, he would make it as painful for Sherlock as possible. And while Sherlock was hurting a whole hell of a lot right now, it would be naïve to think that he couldn’t hurt more.

Sherlock glanced back up at the sign, which had gone back to rotating stock values. FTSE 100 down 96.43. FTSE 250 down 140.95. FTSE 350 down 38.21. He had missed John. He had missed John. He missed John.

But then something wasn’t right. DMJS down 12.11. DMJS wasn’t the abbreviation for any company he’d ever heard of. He of course didn’t know extensive amounts about stocks, not being information he counted as important, but the case with Sebastian Wilkes several months ago, The Blind Banker as John had referred to it on his blog, had left him unfortunately familiar with the kinds of things that read across these boards, and DMJS was not one of them.

“Sherlock, there you are! I’ve been trying to catch up with you for an hour now!” Lestrade appeared beside him, with a lieutenant trailing behind him.

Sherlock had his phone out and was typing away furiously.

“Sherlock, what are you doing?”

“DMJS probably stands for something, right? Nothing comes up in a basic google search. Probably initials then, something more generic, harder to search. 12.11 could be a date, the 12th of November. Or perhaps December 2011. Or December 1911 or 1811 or so on. So I’m running the dates to see if there are any events that might correspond with the initials DMJS,” Sherlock rattled in explanation, using his ‘you’re being thick and dragging me down with you’ voice.

“DJMS 11.12? What are you on about Sherlock?”

“The message from Moriarty on the sign!” Sherlock yelled in exasperation, turning his back on Lestrade as he continued to search on his mobile.

“The--? Look Sherlock, if you take a moment and explain I’m sure we can get a whole team of people together to research whatever it is you’re after.”

“Don’t you understand I have to do this? The message was for me! If you’d just shut up for a second and stop harassing me--!”

“Okay, okay, relax Sherlock,” Lestrade said softly, going down to sit on a nearby bench to wait for Sherlock to work through whatever he was searching for, pacing back and forth while men in suits avoided him and one woman pushing a pram had to nearly dive out of the way to avoid Sherlock’s war path.

“I’ve got it!” Sherlock declared. “Dan Morris and Jenny Stevens drowned in a narrowboat accident November 12th 1972.”

“So, this has something to do with narrow boating?” Lestrade asked, standing up and walking over to Sherlock.

“Maybe, maybe not. Could you get together that research team you promised me and have them look into the movement of all narrow boats in the past two days, and check CCTV along the wharf to check for any narrow boats and their movements?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on it, anything else I can do?”

“No,” Sherlock snapped aggressively. There was nothing that he could do now. Morality had left him a clue, he’d figured it out, but now the only thing he could do is wait. Wait and imagine all the horrible things Moriarty could be having done to John. Wait and wonder if right at that moment they’d run out of time and John was taking his last breath.

And then Sherlock was walking. He didn’t quite know where, but he had to look for John. He walked down to the water and made his way along it, looking for a narrow boat, texting the locations of every single one to Lestrade, hoping that he could check them out, get warrants to board them if any of them came back looking like they could possibly be connected to Moriarty.

An hour later he’d gotten to Westminster. He pulled his jacket tighter around him as the evening grew cold and the sun began to hang lower in the sky, golden light reflecting across the river.

 _Sherlock, go home. We’re doing everything we can, but we don’t even know if John’s anywhere near a narrow boat,_ Lestrade had texted him. Sherlock had growled in frustration when he’d read the text.

There had to be something he could do. It’s not like people usually parked narrow boats on the middle of the Thames in central London. If one had showed up, it would stick out like a sore thumb and some boating enthusiast with little else to do with their time but obsess about useless hobbies would notice and post a picture on some forum for boating enthusiasts and the police would find it and head down to wherever said boat was parked with a warrant and John would be rescued.

Or something like that probably. Fuck Sherlock was getting a headache.

But at least walking the river was something that felt productive, like maybe just maybe he could actually find John this way. If he wasn’t here then what else could he do? Go to his mind palace and hope to come up with something else?

But then maybe he could do both. Sherlock sat down on a bench on the southbank overlooking and river and began to wait. He situated himself in front of a window in his mind palace and processed both the world outside him and the events that had occurred recently.

The sun set and it got darker. Occasionally a river bus passed until it got too late, then only the occasional chortling hen do or group of drunken teenagers stumbled past. By 2 am the river and the land surrounding it had grown completely still and silent except for an occasional night bus or solitary car or the sound of a group of drunks singing in the distance. But still Sherlock sat.

“Sherlock, Sherlock," Sherlock heard a familiar voice calling to him. "I got a call from an officer saying that he found you sleeping on a bench the by the river and I thought, ‘No, Sherlock is probably still being slightly sensible in the face of crisis,’ but then I remembered that you’re Sherlock Fucking Holmes and then look where you are,” Lestrade exclaimed.

“What time is it?” Sherlock asked, ignoring Lestrade’s rage, rolling over on the bench and still remaining curled up and lying down.

“Half seven. There are going to be tourists buzzing about soon down here and we can’t have you lying here like a bum. What were you hoping to accomplish anyway by sleeping rough?”

“This is hardly the first time I’ve slept some place that’s not in a bed in a property I let and this is hardly the most compromising situation you’ve ever caught me in,” Sherlock muttered dryly.

“Well don’t you think that is exactly why I worry? Only a few nights without John and I find you sleeping on a bench! What would happen to you if we can’t--,” Lestrade cut himself off.

“Can’t get John back? Is that what you meant to say?” Sherlock said defensively, unfurling from his position curled on the bench and sitting up. Lestrade sat down beside him.

“Well, Sherlock, it is a possibility. We’ve been trying our best, but we’re not getting anywhere. None of the narrow boats around Canary Wharf have any association with Moriarty. There is some CCTV on the water, but there are definitely plenty of gaps. And none of the ones anywhere near London for that matter seem to have any easily identifiable ties, anyway. And let’s face it, unless its summertime in Ely, people don’t really boat recreationally on the river, none the less with narrow boats. That’s why Morris and Steven’s boat sunk, after all, because no one had taken a boat on the part of the river they were on since September and no one had noticed that a long sunk steel rowboat had been carried down the river and found itself wedged in to protrude from the sediment and would tear into the bottom of their narrow boat.”

Silence fell between them for a few far too long moments.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Sherlock said softly. What was Moriarty’s game this time? What was the point of a game if he couldn’t figure out how to play?

Lestrade softened.

“Why don’t we go get some coffee or something? We’ve got a whole team who have been working all night to try and get John back. But dying of exposure isn’t going to help anything.”

Sherlock’s shoulders drooped in defeat.

“Just tea. No milk, just sugar. And don't you dare suggest food. And I don’t want to go too far from the river. I just feel like I have to stay close," Sherlock said with determination. Then his voice got quieter and sounded frankly un-Sherlock-like as it wavered with uncertainty. "I can’t explain it, but it seems like the only thing that makes sense.”

“Okay, I know a little café a couple blocks west down past the aquarium.”

Sherlock and Lestrade had their tea and coffee, respectively. They didn’t talk much, both of them set their mobiles on the table and tried hard to pretend that they weren’t waiting and hoping for a ring, a beep, a vibration, a flash or anything to indicate news, preferably good news. But nothing happened, and after an hour, Lestrade left to get check on things back at the Yard and Sherlock went back to pacing the river, hoping that something would come to him or that he would see something. He walked for hours, hardly even paying attention to his surroundings anymore, instead just following the river.

“Little brother, what on earth are you doing in Southwark?”

A black car had pulled up beside him and the window had rolled down.

“What are you doing here Mycroft?” Sherlock kept walking determinedly.

“I’ve caught you on CCTV trying to break the world record for largest distance paced. You’ve been wandering back and forth between Battersea and Canary Wharf all morning. You must really be keeping quite a pace to have been able to have already made it all the way down and back twice over the course of the day.”

“I’m observing.”

“All of London?”

Sherlock said nothing.

“Get in, I’ll drive you back as far as Westminster, but anything else is out of my way, and I’d hardly want to encourage you,” Mycroft sighed.

“I’m quite alright, thanks.”

“Sherlock, you will get in or else I’ll tell Mrs. Hudson about that time when you were ten and decided--,” Mycroft began to threaten, but Sherlock cut him off.

“You wouldn’t,” he growled.

“Oh I would. I’m sure your entire social circle will know by the end of the week,”

“What social circle? With John gone--,” Sherlock stopped and pursed his lips, his eyes widening unintentionally with sadness.

“Oh, stop it with the ’I’m Sherlock Holmes the Strongest and Most Tortured Man in the World’ face and get in the car.”

Sherlock scowled but walked around the car, opened the door, and got in.

They sat in silence on the way back up the river. It wasn’t until Sherlock could see the clock tower rising in the distance that Mycroft spoke.

“We’re going to find him, Sherlock.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep and if you know more than you’re letting on I demand that you reveal whatever it is you know right now or else I’ll never forgive you,” Sherlock said, looking out the window as the car made its way slowly through traffic across Westminster Bridge.

“Sherlock--,” Mycroft began.

“Wait, what’s that boat?”

“What boat?” Mycroft turned to look out the window and follow Sherlock’s line of sight.

“That big yacht that’s parked in the middle of the river. I didn't notice it earlier. Or if I did I deleted it. It has a little garage at the base,” Sherlock said distractedly.

“Yes, Sherlock, surely you know that some wealthy people feel it necessary to have areas to store their smaller boats inside of their larger boats. You went to Oxford, and you are my brother, surely these concepts do not surprise you. I don’t know what it’s doing specifically, but I’ll have someone sent out to check the permits. It is unusual to anchor a private boat in this part of the river, but who knows, films now a days seem to have no rules. It's probably an elaborate prop for some spy film.”

“I’m familiar with the concept of wealth and unfortunately the powers of Hollywood," Sherlock grumbled, hating his brother's belittling tone. "But I was just thinking, what if instead of storing a small motor boat in the base of the yacht, you modified it so it could hold something else. Something that might stand out a bit in the middle of the Thames in central London. Something like a narrowboat.”

“I’ll send someone out to check on it,” Mycroft said quickly, understanding Sherlock’s blatant implications.

“But John,” Sherlock argued.

“Could be in Thailand for all we honestly know. We can’t go boarding ships without any reason to just because you’ve come up with a theory.”

“Something’s not right though, there are no people on that ship.”

“Sherlock, that boat is 50 meters away from you, and your eye sight is not superhuman.”

"It's sunny today, people would be on deck," Sherlock defended.

"Sherlock, I'll work as fast as I can," Mycroft began, gesturing to the bright screen of his mobile for effect, but Sherlock had already stopped listening, and was opening the door of the car and flinging himself through traffic to get to the side of the bridge. He took off down the side walk, trying to figure out how to get closer to boat as soon as possible, shoving through crowds of tourists trying to take their picture in front of the Eye.

He heard Mycroft calling after him, but Sherlock just began to run, back across to the South side of the river and down towards South Bank.

John. John was on that boat. He just knew that John was on that boat. It made sense, more sense than anything had made in days and just enough in the sea of nothingness and confusion to make Sherlock believe it had to be true. Moriarty had had John get on a narrow boat in Canary Wharf, but then used a larger boat to move the narrow boat from the docks and down the river. John could have been on the river right across from him all night, for all Sherlock could remember, but he was in a bigger boat than Sherlock had been looking for.

Sherlock sprinted, not caring about the people he was bumping into, until he was parallel to the boat from the bank of the river. He held himself against the railing and caught his breath, trying to figure out how to get out to the boat. Festival Pier was just on the other side of the Golden Jubilee bridges, maybe he could commandeer a boat there to take out to the yacht.

His mind was racing but, he felt strangely at ease. He had found John. He just knew he had found John. Now all he had to do was get to him.

And then there was a massive explosion and the bow of the boat exploded and the boat began to sink, taking any narrowboats and the people inside them that it happened to be hiding within it down into the river. 


	5. The Escapement

John closed his eyes, still holding his breath. He knew he was going to drown, but he couldn’t bring himself to willingly take the last breath and to fill his lungs with the dirty water of the Thames. He was completely underwater now and he’d been underwater for nearly a minute or an eternity when his body started demanding oxygen and John began to instinctively thrash in a vain attempt to get to the surface.

He pulled frantically against the chains that kept him tethered to the ceiling of the boat. He yanked and yanked and then yanked once more and whooshed forwards, the chains, while still bound to his wrists no longer holding him back having come detached from the ceiling.

He was free.

He frantically looked around, trying to see through the dark and murky water. He could only make out the vaguest of shapes and a flashing red light of the expired timer. The water quickly started to sting his eyes and he had to shut them. The door had been right in front of him, hadn’t it, just to the left of the timer? He swam forwards and groped until he found the door knob, pulling open the door. How long could people hold their breaths? The world record was something like ten minutes maybe he’d read once? Which meant what, he had probably all of about a minute at most before his untrained-for-forcing-yourself-to-hold-your-breath-until-right-before-you-go-brain-dead body would demand that he breathe or go unconscious.

John swam as fast as he could towards where the door should have been. Exerting himself and the rising panic was not at all helping his cause. Somehow, despite the chains still binding his wrists, John made it upwards towards where he thought the stairs that led to the exterior door of the boat were.

His movements became increasingly frantic, trying to make out shapes in the darkness of the water. He groped ahead of him, trying to orient himself any way he could.   

His fingers grazed something smooth. Glass. Some of the paper must have fallen off in the water. Glass meant windows. Glass meant a way out. Before he could even think about it, he pulled his arm back and slammed it through the window, shattering the old glass of the weathered boat. He thanked God that the windows of the old nearly dilapidated boat were made of thin glass rather than plastic or something else sturdier. He then threw himself through the space that was created. It wasn’t much, the window wasn’t very big and he hadn’t managed to take out the entire pane. It certainly wasn't safety glass either, and he could feel his skin being grated on the glass as he shoved his body through the opening. But then he broke the surface of the water and frantically gasped for air.

He was alive. But something wasn’t right. Instead of the London skyline it was dark. Not even night dark, just pitch black. The water had a faint shimmer to it, reflecting light from somewhere, but otherwise John might as well have been blind. He reached up and his hands hit something hard and smooth just a foot above his head. He frantically pushed himself forward and found himself bouncing off a wall. It was like he was in a box.

He had air, but no clue how long it would last before the ceiling that was above him was pulled down and took him back under with it. 

Had he been mistaken? Had he died and not realized it? Was this the nothingness of death or a dream of his oxygen deprived mind after he’d lost consciousness and was now just about to drown as his body instinctively breathed in the cold water? It couldn’t be. But he had nowhere to go. And now that he had oxygen, he realized that the adrenaline had worn off and he felt his body going into shock. He was so cold and so tired and everything hurt. He began to shake.

Why was he even fighting it anyway? What did he have outside of this darkness? His body was wrecked, even if he made it out of here, wherever here was. Even if he survived, he couldn’t really, could he? Moriarty couldn’t know or else he might come after Sherlock. He’d said he was taking a holiday. That probably meant going overseas to continue to strengthen himself before coming back to crush Sherlock. But John already had sold his life to buy Sherlock a chance to live, even if it could only be for a little extra time. And now he’d dared try and reclaim it.

It was instinct.

He didn’t mean it.

He should be dead.

And so he pushed himself under the water and inhaled.

* * *

“Come on John. Come on. Breathe John. Come on.”

“Did you get a pulse yet?”

“He has a pulse, he just needs to get the water out of his lungs. Come on John. Fuck. Really John you couldn’t have waited another thirty seconds before giving up, you daft bastard?”

“Oh, because insulting the dying man will definitely bring him back to life. Look at him, Vic. Even if we get him breathing the chance of him making it through this even if he had proper medical care isn’t exactly excellent.”

“We’ve got antibiotics and a first aid kit. Plus John’s a doctor. And he's a stubborn bastard. Just the kind of man to rise from the dead call me out. You hear that, you bastard. What do you have to say for yourself?”

John choked, coughing water out of his lungs as he regained consciousness.

“Here he comes, there you go mate. You’ve got this John,” the voice continued to edge him on.

John blinked and took in his surroundings. He was on the floor of what appeared to be a boat, judging by the navigation equipment positioned across from him and the swaying that he realized he felt. Another fucking boat. Damn, he just wanted to be on land. No, he had just wanted to be dead. A man wearing a wet suit, dark hair wet and mussed, probably a little younger than John, closer to Sherlock’s age leaned over him, looking worried but a bit triumphant. Behind him a woman, around the same age of maybe a bit older was observing him with her arms crossed over her chest, looking both worried and skeptical.

John tried to speak. _What the fuck is going on?_ But he could only keep coughing. He moved to lean over, sputtering water across the floor. The man placed a hand on John’s shoulder to hold him up.

“It’s okay John, take your time.”

“What,” John rasped, taking fast and deep breaths as soon as it seemed like the water was all out of his lungs, “the fuck is going on?”

“We came to pull you out of the river. Sorry it took so long, but Holmes was watching and we couldn’t exactly let him see us.”

_Holmes? Mycroft? No Sherlock. Found him._

John suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe again. He collapsed onto the floor, wincing as his wounded back collided with the floor. He surged back upright, gasping and clawing at his chest with shaking hands. They clawed into his raw flesh of the wounds from where he was whipped and burned and he gasped as it stung. His entire body was on fire

“Shit, Vic. You can’t pull someone half dead out of the river and expect them to be fine after being tortured. He needs an actual hospital.”

“What he probably needs is his boyfriend and world peace, but we can’t have everything now can we?” the man spat.

“Boyfriend?” John gasped.

The woman hushed John and knelt down beside him.

“It’s okay John. Sherlock is fine. And you’re going to be fine. And we’re going to fix everything. Do you want to fix things John?”

John fell back onto the floor, his back arched off the ground and he groaned as the flames of agony flared over his back. The acid. Fuck.

“Sherlock,” John moaned and the then passed out.

* * *

When he woke up again there was a familiar beeping sound and he felt a bit like he was floating. Judging by the firm partially inverted bed, the white walls, bland curtains and tile, observation window, and beeping equipment, he was in a hospital. He opened his mouth to try and say something but instead he found himself coughing. His throat felt raw. At least he hadn't been intubated. 

“John? Are you feeling better?” A woman handed him a cup of ice chips.

 _I’m not pregnant_. Why couldn’t he have water? Was he expected to need surgery?

“It’s just a precaution John. Don't want to overwork your throat and you’re not out of the woods yet. We had to call in some help. We were hoping to avoid it, but unfortunately when you passed out again if became clear that we couldn’t pull you through this with a round of nearly expired antibiotics, some antibacterial ointment and a box of plasters,” the woman, who John remembered now was the same one as earlier, said. He took a closer look at her now that his mind was cloudy with painkillers rather than screaming in pain. She was probably about his height, maybe a bit shorter. Relatively unassuming. Short blond hair, wearing tapered khaki trousers and a blouse and cardigan. " It was a bit touch and go for a while, and you were on a lot of drugs, so I don't imagine you remember much of the past few days. /but you're on the road to recovery."

He took a second to look around him more carefully. He was in a private hospital room. An IV was attached to his arm. He followed the tubes to their source. Blood. Saline. Morphine. 

He tried to remember anything from before this, but the woman was right. He had flashes of bright lights and agony, but otherwise not much else since he was pulled from the river.

“We’ll get the doctor in here soon and he can run through everything with you, then we can talk, alright? I’ll go see if I can track down Victor,” the woman laid her hand over his and smiled gently at him, holding eye contact with him until John turned away, unable to handle the sympathetic look.

“Oh, John, I’m so sorry,” he heard her whisper before the weight on top of his hand disappeared and a few moments later he heard the sound of a door opening and closing.

He was alone.

It didn’t last long. Soon a man in a white coat came in and went through John’s treatment with him, letting John look through his own chart, which John appreciated. He hated being a patient, and he hated feeling patronized by other doctors when he was one himmself.

He noted that he’d been admitted under a fake name, Adam Nelson, apparently. And his stats were all a bit skewed as well. The height listed was far more generous that John ever attempted to lie about, claiming he was 5 foot 11 inches. His weight was inflated as well, listing him at nearly thirteen and a half stone, when even at his most muscular or let go he would generally only reach just over maybe eleven and a half, and after the stress that he’d been through recently, he was likely closer to ten. His bullet wound was left completely unnoted.

Nothing, thankfully, seemed to be too seriously wrong with him internally. They were mostly trying to fight infection. The Thames wasn’t exactly the cleanest body of water in the world, and his wounds had been left untreated for nearly a day. His back was chemically burned, but hadn’t needed a skin graft, which John was thankful for. Apparently the acid wasn't very strong. Not that having a layer of your skin being eaten away was plenty painful, but it hadn't gotten through more than a few upper layers. It would likely scar still, but John didn't care.  had Thinking about having to have a graft now made his feel nauseated. 

He'd needed some stitches and had gotten a handful of tests and scans, but he hadn't needed any surgery, which was encouraging for the amount of time it would take him to recover. His jaw had also needed to be stitched up. They were worried about the stab wound, but it hadn’t hit any internal organs. The split and scotched skin across his chest was basically inconsequential in comparison to the rest of it and thankfully the infection that he was showing signs of seemed to be residing quickly thanks to a round of strong antibiotics.

He would be nearly deformed, by the time he healed, the skin of his back would be rough and constantly inflamed looking. The cut on his jaw might fade in a couple years if he was lucky, but his age wasn’t exactly on his side when it came to that sort of healing anymore. He’d have a dimple of scar tissue in his side, but it would be irrelevant to his marred face and back. His chest might heal scar free, assuming the wounds didn’t become massively infected, but he'd probably be left with faint marks. He guessed he should be thankful that Moriarty hadn't given Moran free reign to start amputating limbs. He should be thankful that all things considering it wasn't that bad. He knew that similar injuries could keep people hospitalized for at least a month, and if things continued on as they were currently he'd be out by the beginning of the next week. But he felt like a monster. He deserved it after all he'd done.

He was going to be held for at least a week to watch the infection, but after than he could be released if he wanted, although he'd probably need to take it easy for several weeks so as not to aggravate his injuries and give himself time to fully heal. He’d get prescription for some relatively strong pain meds and antibiotics, but then he could get back to his life, the doctor had told him.

Except he didn’t exactly have a life anymore, but he didn’t think that was something the doctor could help him with.

* * *

“Excuse me?” John sputtered.

“We’ve formed a counter initiative and we’d like your help. If you’re willing, of course.”

After the doctor left the man and woman, Victor and Mary, apparently, had come back in. They detailed how they had been watching the boat, waiting for the right moment to save him. That they’d been watching Moriarty’s movements regarding John for weeks now. They couldn’t get to the boat until it went down, none the less do anything to help John earlier, out of fear that Moriarty would still be watching too closely. They needed the panic of the wreck. After it had begun to sink, Victor had gone in with scuba gear, but was delayed because of Sherlock’s vantage point and they'd had to move their boat to the other side of the wreck. No one could see John be pulled out of the Thames or it would “ruin everything.” And apparently "everything" was a secret initiative to bring Moriarty down.

“But Moriarty is out of the picture right now, he told me,” John exclaimed. “And Sherlock. And the Yard. And Mycroft. They’re all taking care of Moriarty. I don’t understand. How did you know I was on the boat anyway? If Sherlock couldn’t find me in time, then how could—,” John trailed off, confused and feeling awfully tired again.

“How could we be expected to save you?” Victor supplied. “Don’t worry, it’s not an insult to Sherlock’s intelligence. It’s just a matter of his positioning. Sherlock is in the center of things regarding Moriarty. And as you surely found out, tearing down Moriarty’s web from the inside, while seemingly the only way to do it, is a hopeless pursuit at this stage. But we have a theory. If we weaken Moriarty’s web from the outside, then Sherlock will be able to cast the final blow from within. But in order to do that, we need to stay out of the world Sherlock and all your little crime fighting buddies are currently occupying.”

John was speechless. Everything they kept telling him probably made sense, but yet there was so much that didn’t.

It was all too much so fast. He was supposed to be dead. Taking a nice eternal nap. Instead, he was being briefed on secret missions. 

He was just so tired. 

“Don’t hurt yourself John, we’ll catch you up,” Mary said, her voice sounding playful. John looked up at her to find her grinning at him, and he felt the corner of his mouth twitch a bit for the first time in ages, although it was more muscle memory than a genuine reaction.

“I just don’t understand who you are. And what we’re supposed to do about Moriarty if he doesn’t want to be found right now,” John said finally.

“Just because Moriarty’s gone AWOL right now doesn’t mean that everyone who works for him and everyone who is loyal to him has suddenly disappeared. They’re all still operating, many of them are still in London. The cab driver, the Chinese smugglers, there are so many more people like them that are still in operation, waiting for Moriarty’s orders. Waiting to repay the debts they've acquired through his assistance. And the fact that Moriarty is likely abroad or in hiding right now makes it a perfect opportunity to find them and take them out without it catching his notice,” Victor explained.

“But we only knew about the cabbie and smugglers because Moriarty wanted us to. How would we possibly get to any of them before they even commit a crime at Moriarty’s orders? And where are you getting your intelligence?” John asked. God, his head ached. Well, everything ached as whatever initial blast of morphine they had given him was wearing off and he was hesitant to have more administered.

“We have someone high up in the British government who has been helping us out. He recruited us, in fact. I used to work for Moriarty, ages ago. But I got out and he’s long forgotten about me. I wasn’t anyone of particular interest to him, it wasn’t hard to pretend to get killed during an operation and just disappear. And Mary, well I don’t know exactly where he tracked down Mary, who is probably not really called Mary by the way. You’re welcome to interrogate her, but the most I’ve been able to get out of her in the couple years now that I’ve known her is that her favorite flowers are daisies and she thinks the idea of putting corn on a pizza is ridiculous. Which is to say, I know virtually nothing.”

John looked between Victor and Mary. Victor was smiling teasingly and Mary rolled her eyes. 

“Who is this government official? If even Mycroft has been on Moriarty’s tail and hasn’t been able to do much to help in getting any closer to bringing him down, I can’t imagine your guy is any better.”

Mary and Victor exchanged glances.

“Mycroft’s position to Sherlock limits him. Just as the New Scotland Yard are limited because of Sherlock’s connection to Lestrade,” Mary answered after a moment.

“And we still try to remain as removed from our man as much as possible. We’re completely underground, there is no record of us as far as any organization is concerned, particularly the government. All intelligence is exchanged via paper files drops to areas without CCTV and are burned when we’re done with them. This right now, actually, is the most involved he’s ever been with us,” Victor explained.

John furrowed his brow, not sure what that meant, but thankfully Mary quickly elaborated.

“Victor was hoping to be able to pull you out of the river and apply some antiseptic and give you a couple paracetamol and move on. We had to call the super emergency untraceable line for him from our burner phone that we were told to never call ever unless it actually is the apocalypse in order to get you into hospital without risking the Scotland Yard checking area hospitals for John Does or someone who otherwise looked like you.” That explained the false ID and statistics, although now that John thought about it, that was obvious. “You’re in a private facility in Croydon, I’m sure you already know that we’ve had your records here falsified.”

John nodded slowly, absorbing the information.

“Okay. Fine. I still don’t understand exactly what you want me to do,” he said after a moment.

“Well John, for all intents and purposes, you have been burned from Sherlock’s life. And given your skill, training, and experience with Moriarty, we’d like to recruit you now to join us. You're on the outside now.”

John felt his heart stop when the proposition was finally made so plainly. Even in his drugged up brain, a part of him knew that this was what they meant when they asked for his help. But suddenly hearing it was too much.

“So I’d stay dead. Moriarty, Lestrade, Mycroft, Sh—,” John’s voice broke, “Sherlock, they would all still think I’m dead. But I’d help you. So that when the time is right Sherlock can make his move and take Moriarty down once and for all.”

“Yes, John. I’m so sorry,” Mary said.

“No. No. I mean. Yes. But don’t be sorry. There is no place left for me in that world anyway, not after everything I’ve done.”

John owed Sherlock this. He’d surely hurt him so much, betrayed him so deeply, that the least he could do was this. It’s not like he had anything else anyway.

It hadn’t felt like suicide at the time, but John supposed that’s what it had been. He’d stopped fighting and willingly filled his lungs with water. Hell, he was the one who walked to his death and held his hands above his head so that he could be restrained. John couldn’t picture his life without Sherlock Holmes, but this was beyond him now, wasn’t it? Where would the world be without Sherlock Holmes? What would the world be like if Moriarty succeeded in whatever master plan he had? He’d had his selfishness and he’d had his time with Sherlock. That was done now.

He would do this, whatever was asked of him. And then Sherlock once and for all could be safe. And then John could reassess if there was any space left in the world for himself. If he didn’t die in the process, of course. 

“Brilliant,” Victor grinned. “Well then, let’s get to work.”

“Victor, don’t you think we should at least wait until John gets out of hospital? He needs to rest.”

“No, it’s fine. If you’re sure it’s secure here I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t start catching me up. Do you actually have someone identified as being linked to Moriarty, or are we still working on following strings?” John struggled to pull himself a bit more upright in bed, groaning as pressure shifted along his back.

“We do have someone who is linked to Moriarty. She’s a bit grey as far as her allegiances to him go. I think she likes to pretend that she has more autonomy than she really does. We also have information that she may have taken an interest in Sherlock, and we need to stop her from entering his sphere. The second he knows of her, there likely isn’t anything we can do about her without compromising ourselves,” Victor explained.

“Does this person have a name?” John asked.

“Irene Adler."

* * *

“Tax fraud?” John sputtered. He’d gotten out of hospital a week ago and had been taken to Victor and Mary’s base, which was actually a two bedroom flat in South London. Victor had given up his shoebox of a bedroom to John and was now sleeping on the couch.

It was an odd life that he had fallen in with, living and working with Victor and Mary. They were a very self-contained unit, neither Mary nor Victor seemed to have any connections with the outside world, nor any interest in doing even as much as going down to the pub together for a drink in the evenings. John had wondered if they were involved at first, even if just for the sake of not having to maintain complete abstinence in their isolation, but their relationship seemed to be strictly professional with negligible amounts of emotional attachment in any form. John very much had the sense that they viewed this as an assignment and after this was over they would likely never speak again. And if at any point leaving another behind became in the best interest in maintaining the integrity of the work that had done so far, neither of them would think twice about it.

John however, seemed to break the dynamic a bit. As much as John absolutely did not need nor want it, Victor and Mary both seemed to feel some level of, oh how John hated even thinking in terms like this, but fondness and protectiveness for John. He sometimes felt less like a member of their team and more like someone who had been assigned two very odd body guards.

They were sitting in the small living room, with Victor and Mary on the couch pouring over files spread out on the coffee table. John sat delicately in an arm chair across from them. He was still fighting to manage the pain in his back, the wounds would like take a while to heal completely, plus his side often ached but John wasn’t sure if that was psychosomatic or not at this point. His limp was back and his hand had a near constant tremor now a day, so he imagined it could be.

“Yes, we’ve found that that’s often the best way. Criminals are very rarely honest about how much money they make. And usually in the inquiry something a bit more criminal will come up and they’ll get put away for at least a decade or two, or at the very least all of their assets will be repossessed and they’ll become useless to Moriarty. They’ll usually disappear off the grid completely in that case, just out of fear of Moriarty realizing that they’ve become unusable and coming to take them out himself.”

“When you asked for my help, I was mentally preparing to become an assassin, not be digging through records to construct tips to turn into HMRC,” John sputtered. He had spent the past two weeks being briefed on Adler and all of the previous successes that Victor and Mary had already achieved, all while not actually mentioning how they’d been doing it.

“That’s really only a last resort John. We are trying not to become criminals ourselves any more than necessary,” Mary explained.

“Yeah, plus if we were going to take anyone out, Mary or I could do it just fine. We don’t need you getting blood on your hands,” Victor laughed, looking pointedly at John's trembling hand that lay uselessly on the armrest of the rain. Since the incident, John's limp and tremor had returned full force. Since being released from the hospital, the psychosomatic pain and instability had been lessening, but had still not completely receded. 

“I am a soldier!” John exclaimed stubbornly, twisting his hand into a fist and stuffing it into his lap.

“You have the most to risk,” Mary replied calmly. She paused for a moment, seeming conflicted over how to explain herself. “If things fall apart, if we get caught in the field, arrested for murder or assault or anything else for that matter, and our man can’t get us off without compromising our work, which is likely, it hardly matters for either of us. But if that happened to you, Moriarty would know you’re alive. Sherlock would know you’re alive. What you had been doing would be unearthed and all the work that we’ve done will likely become meaningless with a few simple recalculations on Moriarty’s part. This only works if Moriarty doesn’t realize his web has been disassembled until he makes his big move and realizes at the last minute that there is no one left to help him. If he finds out before that moment though, then I imagine he’ll be able to make all our work meaningless with a few phone calls.”

John said nothing. After a few moments he sighed.

“So we’re going to assemble this file, deliver it to someone, and then Irene Adler will spend the next year at least sorting herself out legally and unable to aid Moriarty or um, play, with Sherlock.”

Irene Adler was certainly an interesting character, John had discovered while he’d learned more and more about the self-proclaimed dominatrix. And while John tried not to let his mind think of himself and Sherlock as a _them_ in any sense of the word, he felt repulsed at the idea of letting someone like Irene Adler anywhere near Sherlock.

“Yup,” Victor confirmed. “Then we move onto the next one.”

“I feel like I’m working an office job,” John groaned.

“Sorry to disappoint you John, secret ops teams rarely are all murder, explosion, murder, fight scene, murder. It’s a lot of recon and paperwork,” Victor quipped.

John groaned.

* * *

 “John, John.” John was roused from sleep by Mary shaking his shoulder. He felt his heart pounding and for a second he thought that Mary was waking him from a nightmare. He'd been having them pretty often recently, but thankfully they weren't the screaming bloody murder kind. He couldn't remember dreaming much of anything though tonight. 

They’d taken care of Irene Adler, who had been arrested a few days ago on a very boring charge, something to do with embezzlement. Victor had gone out to pick up another file, from the mysterious government official referred to often only as “our man” and to do a bit of reconnaissance. John had been strictly forbidden from going, and Mary had claimed that she had some reading she needed to get done, but John felt like she was his babysitter. Why he needed a babysitter he didn’t know. He was dead. They hadn’t published an obituary or held a memorial for him or anything, and obviously divers they sent after the wreck hadn’t been able to find the body to bury. But Mary had told him the police presumed he was dead. And while she hadn’t said it, she knew what she meant most was that Sherlock presumed he was dead. That was the bit John cared about, anyway. 

“What?” John grumbled, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.

“We have a problem. Victor’s made a mistake. He’s been compromised.”

John’s hands dropped from his face and he looked at Mary in alarm.

“What happened?”

“There was a collision.”

John flew out of bed instantly and went out to the living room and began to pace, waiting for Mary to elaborate. But he knew what that word meant. And it wasn’t that Victor had wrecked a car.

“I told you that we were going to work on disassembling a gang that Moriarty draws a lot of his hit men from next. Well Vic went out to snoop around a flat of one the higher-ups in the gang that serves as a bit of a home base. No one was supposed to be around, I’d tailed them a while ago and their schedule seems pretty strict.”

“But?” John asked.

“The Yard were there. And, and Sherlock. Apparently a private client of his had gotten themselves involved in the gang. With the gang involvement though Sherlock must have wound up getting help from the Yard. They had a warrant to search the property. Victor tried to escape before they saw him, but didn't get out in time. He’s been arrested. He’s confessed to being a member of an opposing gang rather than compromise us.”

“Shit,” John collapsed onto the sofa, holding his head in his hands. “What do we do?”

“We aren’t supposed to do anything.”

“No. You can’t be serious,” John stood up suddenly. “We can’t do nothing.”

“There is no evidence to substantiate his claims. They’ll probably release him in a couple days, maybe he’ll spend a couple months in a low security prison for the breaking and entering charge and his confession if he manages to really frustrate everyone and gets completely screwed over by the legal system. And then when he gets out he’ll disappear. We can keep working. We’re getting so close, John. This gang was one of the last substantial teams under Moriarty’s influence in London. He has some assassins that move around too much for us to deal with at this stage, and then maybe some arms dealers or specialists abroad, but we always knew those kinds of support are too far out of our realm and not closely enough tied to Moriarty to matter if we take care of everything else."

John sat down again and Mary came and sat down next to him. His face was hardened and unreadable.

“So, we leave Victor, he’ll be fine,” John said, sounding resigned. “But we still need to deal with the gang.”

“The collision John. We can’t do anything about it now that Sherlock’s involved. It’s too high risk. We'll have to wait until he backs off before going after them.”

“No, I refuse to accept that. We don't have time to wait around. I'm not going to sit here and do nothing. What do we need to take them down anyway? What was the plan? You don’t take an entire gang down on tax evasion charges. No one in their right mind would go through that inquiry if they wanted to live. What were you planning, trying to pick them off one at a time by making sure they were arrested for petty crimes?”

“No,” Mary said defiantly. “Well, I mean sort of. We figured we’d pick off enough of them, and then target their leaders, and hope that at that point they were so disorganized that they’d be useles to Moriarty.”

John growled. But then he grew quiet and began to think. Mary sat there and watched him silently.

After a few minutes he spoke.

“But what if we sent a message to them instead? What if we made an example of them? ‘If you get involved with Moriarty, this is what happens to you’,” John said slowly.

“No. I don’t like where you’re going John. We’re not killing anyone, more specifically, you aren’t killing anyone.”

“I didn’t say that I was going to kill anyone,” John snapped, but then took a breath to calm himself. “I said we’d make an example of them. Our process all along has been contingent on Moriarty not finding out, so he couldn’t just contract another killer, another smuggler, another gang. What if we made it that no one in their right mind would dare agree to work with Moriarty,” John said, a grin tugging at the edges of his lips.

“John, while that in theory sounds like a feasible plan, if this were, you know, a high budget Hollywood espionage film, how the hell do you plan to be more terrifying than Moriarty?”

“Moriarty may be a criminal mastermind, but mostly he’s an actor. Always loved the theatrics. All he needs is to be outperformed,” John said cryptically. “Do you trust me?”

“Could I stop you if I didn’t?” Mary rolled her eyes.

John laughed.


	6. The Cog

_No. No. No. No_.

This couldn’t be happening. In all the possible realities that Sherlock had ever considered, John drowning in the Thames in a ship wreck caused by Moriarty was not one of them. In fact, despite how he fought to try and protect John from Moriarty these past few weeks, he hadn’t ever considered it a possibility that John could actually die. John was his shining good thing. He had already survived so much, he was supposed to be invincible.

After a few moments of paralysis, Sherlock lurched forwards in an attempt to throw himself over the railing into the river. Arms caught him around the shoulders, holding down his forearms and clasping against his chest. Sherlock blindly fought against them, but the arms held him firm, although hot breath was panted against his neck.

“Sherlock,” a voice said between pants. “Sherlock you can’t.”

Sherlock fought in vain still, bringing a foot up to push against the railing, causing both him and the person holding him back to fall backwards on to the ground. He rolled off of the assailant and tried to fling himself towards the railing, but was tackled to the ground. His arms were pinned on either side of his head as the other man knelt above him.

“Let me go Mycroft,” Sherlock tried to say maliciously, but instead sounded broken and tired.

“No. Throwing yourself into the river is only going to cause you to get hypothermia and ruin that expensive coat of yours, best case scenario. Properly equipped rescue units are already on their way, and there is no conclusive evidence that anyone was even on board,” Mycroft reassured as he let his brother go and left him sprawled on the pavement. “And I never want to hear you make another goddamn comment about my weight again,” he added.

Sherlock might have scoffed at that in another time. But right now, he realized he was crying.

“I let him down,” he choked.

Mycroft said nothing. Instead he helped Sherlock up and guided him to a nearby bench.

They sat in silence as they watched as police and coastguard boats began to swarm the steadily sinking vessel. Sherlock sat very still, back erect and hands gripping his thighs, like he was physically trying to hold himself together. Mycroft slowly raised his hand from his own lap and placed it over one of Sherlock’s.

They sat like that until the last of the boat sunk down below the water.

Faintly, Sherlock heard the vibrations of a phone, but couldn’t bring himself to really process much of anything.

“Once the wreck has settled, divers will be better able to search it. There were no indicators of anyone in distress while the ship was sinking, and it’s too dangerous to send a diver into a sinking ship.” he heard Mycroft murmur, but for perhaps the first time in his life, Sherlock’s brain seemed to have shut down completely. He couldn’t bring himself to do or say anything. His mind felt like static.

And so he continued to sit. And Mycroft sat with him. At some point Lestrade showed up, Sherlock vaguely realized as the DI stood in front of Mycroft and himself. Mycroft and Lestrade exchanged a few words, but Sherlock didn’t seem to be able to hear them, or at least process what they were saying. Sherlock did recognize that someone sat down on the other side of him, a shoulder brushing up lightly against his own.

They could have sat like that for hours for all Sherlock knew. From his understanding of it later, it was nearly two and a half hours of the three of them sitting silently on the bench. The sun had set, the sky fading into the blue of twilight before any of them spoke.

“They found a narrowboat in the yachts boat hold,” Mycroft announced. Sherlock felt Lestrade tense besides him. “There is no sign to a body. The narrowboat was crushed though as the yacht went down. They’re going to have to excavate the wreck, resurface it piece by piece because of it’s positioning in the river anyway. Leaving the wreck would be too dangerous considering how trafficked the area is, none the less considering the concerns of it being a crime scene. They’re preparing to work through the night. Right now though the Marine Policing unit of the Met is in charge. If a body or any other indications of any sort of foul play is found, I’m sure the Gregory’s division will be notified.”

Sherlock heard his brother’s words and found himself nodding slowly. Then he stood up and turned to look down at his brother and Lestrade.

“I already know what happened, any investigation will only confirm hardly even half of what I already know, if there is any competence left over at the Yard at all. John is dead. It’s Moriarty’s fault,” Sherlock said coldly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some thinking to do.”

And with that he turned up his collar and began walking west back along the river.

“Sherlock!” he heard Lestrade call after him, but his brother said something softer, clearly to Lestrade that Sherlock was now too far away to hear.

No one came after him.

He was alone.

He didn’t know where he was heading. It didn’t appear to be home, walking the wrong direction entirely, but he didn’t have it in him to turn around. He walked blindly as he retreated into his mind palace. There had to be something somewhere in there that he could use. He was done playing games. To say Moriarty had gone too far would be an unfathomably large understatement.

What was he supposed to do from here? What kind of counter-move could Moriarty possibly expect him to make? What could he do? There had to be something. Something not right, something he missed, something else out there waiting to be discovered. John’s death had to have some sort of point to Moriarty. He couldn’t have just been disposed of like a common criminal whose use had run out.

John was so much more than that. And Moriarty knew that.

What could he possibly be trying to accomplish?

Eventually he did find himself in a cab heading to Baker Street. When the cab pulled up to the flat he pushed a twenty pound note towards the driver and got out, not even bothering to look at the meter. It was probably enough. Probably too much, but Sherlock couldn’t remember how long he was in the cab for. The driver didn’t seem to complain though and Sherlock went inside the building and walked up the stairs and opened the door of 221B.

There was a part of him that had been imagining seeing John sitting there in his chair. He’d imagined shouting at John for worrying him. He imagined John being confused and giving him some foolish and dull excuse. He’d imagine kneeling over John in his chair, his thighs around Johns, his bum resting on Johns lap, and snogging him senselessly. He imagined grinding his erection against Johns, he imagined kissing John’s neck, breathing in his scent. He imagined John’s voice, rough and filled with lust, gasping, “Christ, Sherlock.” 

And for a second a far too large part of him expected to see John sitting there, like it was the only possible reality just because he'd been able to imagine it.

But the door swung open and the flat was dark. Light from the street outside streamed in through the window, however, and the golden light nestled on John’s empty chair.

Sherlock swung the door shut behind him and it closed with a click.

“John?” Sherlock’s voice rang out through the flat, just to be sure.

He heard only silence in return.

And in that moment the grief overcame him. It was all too much. John was gone. Forever. 

And there was nothing that he would ever be able to do about it, no matter how much time he spent in his mind palace or how intelligent he was.

He found himself gasping as he fell back into the door, a sob escaping his throat. He leaned forwards to counteract the fact that it felt as if his knees were about to buckle and stumbled forwards, grasping onto the arm of Johns chair to catch himself. His head fell limp between his arms as he began to sob uncontrollably. His knees did buckle and he found himself kneeling against John’s chair, his head buried in the armrest.

He tried to inhale, trying to find some scent of John there. Perhaps the scent of John’s soap or of tea that he’d spilled, but instead found that he couldn’t breathe through his nose enough to smell anything.

He sobbed hard. He sobbed until he began to worry he would suffocate on his own tears and snot.

He lifted his head and gasped, panicked and trying to calm himself. He blinked the tears out of his eyes and looked upwards to find himself staring at the mantle. A stack of books, a figurine that he had long deleted the origin of, a dagger stabbed into the wood. His skull.

He found himself on his feet, stepping around John’s chair and reaching out to pick up the skull. He smoothed his fingers along it. “ _A friend of mine. When I say a friend…”_

Sherlock pulled his arm back and launched the skull across the room, letting out an anguished cry as he did so. It hit the wall and shattered.

Sherlock’s arm fell to his side. Another sob escaped his lips. He climbed over the armrest into Johns chair and curled up on his side, his arms clasped around his knees and his head lolled into the chair back.

The flat fell silent.

 

* * *

 

_I need help with a client –SH_

_What client?_

_A mother worried that her son has gotten himself wrapped up in a gang. -SH_

_How is that of interest to you? You don’t generally do human interest pieces._

_She came home to find her wall tagged with what turned out to be her son’s blood. –SH_

_What do you need?_

_A warrant, I’ll email you the information I have so far. My client will happily come in for questioning if necessary. She’s already been questioned by the gang division of the Met when she first reported it. I’m sure you can have it transferred. –SH_

That out of the way, Sherlock sat back down and returned to his mind palace. Over two weeks after the wreck and he had grown tired of not feeling like he was capable of doing anything. Catatonia was boring. Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, all coming in and out of his flat at any given moment, clearly hoping to see that he’d managed to move himself from John’s chair, trying to get him to eat something, move to his bed to sleep properly, go outside, or at the very least relieve himself.

 _“How silly do you think you’re going to feel when you find that you’ve gotten an infection, ruptured your bladder, or pissed yourself because you refuse to get up from that sodding chair?_ ” Mycroft had shouted at him by only the second day. With the insult to the chair, Sherlock had found enough anger to power himself upwards and to the toilet before coming back to the chair and collapsing into it, burying his face, all without even a glance at Mycroft.

Mycroft left after that, but returned the next day with a round-a-bout insult to John juxtaposed with a complaint about Sherlock dying of dehydration that had gotten Sherlock sitting upright in John’s chair having tea with his brother and Mrs. Hudson. The two of them talked. Sherlock said nothing.

The day after that Mycroft had come over to find Sherlock in the shower, a mug and a plate in the sink revealing that Sherlock had in fact eaten something, albeit just tea and toast, on his own. The sheets of Sherlock’s bed were mussed indicating that he’d slept there, at least for a while last night.

The ache that overcame Mycroft when he spotted one of John’s jumpers wadded up by the pillow was one that Mycroft hadn’t felt towards Sherlock since he had been mourning the death of his beloved childhood pet dog, Redbeard. Mycroft found himself wandering into Sherlock’s room, reaching out and letting his fingertips graze the material of the jumper.

This ache was a thousand times worse than it had been then.

“ _What are you doing?_ ” Sherlock had snapped at him from the door, a towel wrapped around his waist fresh out of the shower. It was the first time he’d heard Sherlock speak in days. He hadn’t answered the question, instead said something mildly nagging. Sherlock had nodded, and then went back to ignoring him. Mycroft felt defeated.

The next day Mycroft and Lestrade tag teamed it to inform Sherlock that they’d finished fishing the two boats out of the river. There was no body found, but there were very faint traces of blood found on the wood of the narrowboat that was identified to belong to John. There were indications from marks in the wood and some sort of metal clasps popular for bondage they’d found that he’d been hung from the ceiling of the boat, likely tortured, although whatever was binding him to the ceiling could not be found. It was a possibility that while trying to uncover the narrowboat, John’s body had become dislodged, whatever was tethering him to the boat having become detached when the boat was crushed, and he got carried down river. John Watson was officially declared missing, presumed dead.

Sherlock imagined John's body, pale and marred with wounds from torture, floating somewhere lost in the murky water of the Thames. He imagined John strung up and screaming while he was repeatedly assaulted. He imagined John hanging there, bleeding and defeated. 

The news had been a setback on the small progress that Sherlock had made towards being a functioning human again. Sherlock had returned to the chair, ignoring the world and even the most desperate pleas. Hearing the official report of John's demise was too much for Sherlock to bear, and he retreated into his mind.

Three more days and Mycroft sent a hospice nurse and a couple of muscular assistants to carry Sherlock to his bed, where they hooked him up to an IV to be fed via parenteral nutrition, as well as outfitting him with a catheter and fecal collector. A part of Mycroft had hoped that he'd be able to embarrass his brother out of his stubborn mourning. When Sherlock's face remain blank as he was stripped by strangers, however, Mycroft was finally forced to admit that this wasn't just his brother being dramatic.

Five days and Mycroft sent in doctors and psychiatric specialists, trying anything to get Sherlock to respond, or at least determine if there was any treatable reason for Sherlock’s seeming absence from his body. They eventually started him on benzodiazepine.

The next day Mycroft came to Sherlock’s flat to find him sitting across from a plain looking middle aged woman. She was sniffing. Sherlock was handing her a tissue.

Sherlock’s phone had vibrated in his pocket, and surprisingly Sherlock answered the call.

“Yes, thank you Molly. I deeply appreciate it. If we’d had to wait for the Met to get the results it would have taken days,” Sherlock had hung up the phone and turned back to the woman,

“Well, Mrs. Huxley. You’re correct in your assumptions. The blood does belong to your son.”

The woman gasped and then sobbed. Sherlock looked slightly irritated. 

Apparently Sherlock had taken a case.

It was all Sherlock could think to do, when he finally came to his senses and was fairly horrified and embarrassed at his own actions, or lack of them. John was….gone. But Moriarty was out there still. And so Sherlock had checked his phone to find a message from one Jane Huxley. He was surprised that he had gotten the call, usually clients called John as it was his number attached to the blog that had been gaining annoying amounts of attention at an increasing and alarming rate. But Sherlock’s number was posted on his own website, and he supposed a desperate woman could have easily missed the news that the reason the number listed on the blog wasn’t working was because it and its owner had been sunken into the Thames, and instead sought out an alternative way of contacting.

The case, while he wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to be trying to achieve, proved interesting enough. He’d gotten Molly, who after a moment of surprise at Sherlock’s sudden appearance in her lab and a confused but concerned “How are you doing?,” which Sherlock ignored, she fell into step alongside him and agreed to test the sample of blood that Sherlock had collected from Mrs. Huxley’s wall.

And then that’s where things started to get interesting. Mrs. Huxley’s son, Michael, was apparently not just some kid who felt lost, fell in with the wrong people, and then royally fucked up. Rather he was a genius. Not quite like Sherlock was, but he was very, very good at maths and had apparently been contracted to work with the government regarding something top secret and dangerous. Sherlock of course hadn’t wanted to ask Mycroft on his own. He was not particularly up to asking his brother for anything ever again after all the babysitting his brother did for him to keep him from accidentally killing himself out of grief and ambivalence for life. But ultimately he deigned to, only to receive nothing more than a confirmation that Michael Huxley had had some government involvement. It was completely unhelpful.

But then he’d finally gotten Mrs. Huxley to admit that there was a file, a flash drive, which Michael had been carrying with him everywhere on a chain around his neck. Sherlock admittedly didn’t understand what all the pieces where, but after some probing of his homeless network, he’d discovered that there was rumored to be a flat, owned by gang leader Phillip Rogers, referred to not particularly creatively, as ‘The Torture Chamber.’ It was highly likely that that’s where Michael was being held. Sherlock tried to go to the flat on his own of course, but there was not a single vantage point into the flat, with all the windows covered, and no way he could find to break in without it being obvious, and no way to know if anyone would be inside.

So he’d asked Lestrade to get a search warrant to enter the property. Mrs. Huxley’s and his homeless networks testimony were not actually a lot to go on, apparently. But Lestrade had found a JP who had a particularly strong vendetta against gang violence and played up Michael Huxley’s dedicated involvement in the government, another thing that this magistrate was obviously pretty fond of as dictated by his career choice.

Search warrant issued, Sherlock, Lestrade, and a small team went to the flat and demanded entry. No one answered and the door was banged in. The police were supposed to go ahead and check to make sure that everything was clear. Sherlock, however, completely ignored protocool as he barged in.

He quickly began to scan the living space. It wasn’t anything particularly spectacular. Beer cans scattered amid cheap, worn furniture. Who knew gang members shopped at IKEA? A gun was carelessly lying on a table. Sherlock nearly rolled his eyes at the cockiness of some people, clearly a display in power more than carelessness. ‘ _Look how many guns I have, I don’t even need to take proper care of them_.’

Something seemed off. This flat didn’t seem like a torture chamber. He’d imagined soundproofing would be in order, or there would be better taken care of weapons and other instruments of torture around. Instead it looked like the flat of an untidy alcoholic.

Then he heard a noise from somewhere in the back of the flat. Sherlock bolted in that direction, shoving past an officer who had just been rounding the corner, his weapon held high in front of him, still trying in vain to make sure the flat was clear.

“Jesus, Sherlock, you’re going to get yourself shot!” Lestrade yelled after him when the officer stumbled into a wall and began cursing after Sherlock.

Sherlock didn’t care though, he was on the case. He wanted to understand, he _needed_ to understand Michael Huxley and everything that was going on. He flung open the door to a bedroom at the back of the flat at the end of the short hallway.

What he saw however, was not a wounded Michael Huxley. What, _who,_ he saw was not someone he had ever anticipated seeing again at all. He froze to match the person who he was staring at, who seemed paralyzed as well.

“Victor?”

 

* * *

Sherlock Holmes had not seen Victor Trevor in more than ten years, not since university. Sherlock at the time been far stricter back then with his ‘no emotional attachments to anyone’ rule than he had apparently become over the years, and had no interest in staying in touch with his one university pseudo-friend. And he assumed Victor had understood that which was why he didn’t continue to have to turn down invitations to the pub. But apparently the man had gotten himself busy with other things.

He claimed that he was involved with an opposing gang. He claimed that he was searching for something that had been stolen. Some sort of trinket, Sherlock didn’t even bother to remember what it was, he’d deleted it instantly as it seemed so irrelevant. It was nothing actually worth money but that was instead worth pride. He was also quick to point out that Sherlock’s intel was complete garbage and ‘The Torture Chamber’ was ironic more than it was truly sadistic. In fact it was the personal residence of a leader in the gang and the place where he was known for taking women back to to have sex. Lots of women. Lots of sex.

To say that Sherlock was frustrated would be underselling it. Not only did it turn out that Sherlock had gone through all the trouble of actually bothering to get a warrant for once only to discover that he was humiliatingly wrong, but also because Victor Trevor was lying but he couldn’t deduce the truth off him. In fact, he could hardly read the man at all.

“Let me question him,” Sherlock demanded, standing in Lestrade’s office at the Yard.

“Sherlock, you in no way have the clearance to question anyone. Maybe, if he’s willing to see you, you can visit him tomorrow after we’ve finished processing him,” Lestrade informed Sherlock.

“But—,” Sherlock tried but Lestrade cut him off.

“No Sherlock. This isn’t something I can negotiate on right now. If we had any sort of real case on him than maybe I could file you as a specialist and let you talk to him on the record, but right now we’ve only got him on trespassing, which will likely not hold very long since as much as Phillip Rogers may like to lock up someone from a rival gang, it is highly unlikely he’ll step forwards to press those charges since there are several warrants out for his own arrest. Trevor’s confession is basically useless as far as prosecution goes. It’s not technically illegal to be a gang member.”

“That’s like saying it’s not illegal to be a criminal!” Sherlock shouted.

“Well, I mean it’s not, technically, I suppose. If he confessed to a specific crime, or any series of documented crimes that he may have committed as part of gang involvement, then that’s one thing. But that’s the point, we arrest people for committing crimes, not for claiming to be a type of person who historically commit crimes. And the only reason I could imagine him admitting anything is if there is something that he’s been involved with recently that he feels is highly likely to get him caught, then he might vie to make a deal or something in exchange for information. But again, that’s a theoretical scenario, and we’re working with what we actually know, not things that could possibly be the case.”

“But surely if Phil Rogers has warrants out for his arrest, there must at least be one out for Victor?” Sherlock asked. There had to be something about Victor that he was missing. Everything wasn’t making sense anymore. Huxley was nowhere to be found and the reason for his disappearance at all was a mystery. His homeless network had failed him. And now someone he used to know had shown up claiming a career choice that did not at all become an Oxford graduate from a wealthy family. It just didn’t fit. Surely even someone as dull as Lestrade had to see that.

“Victor Trevor barely exists as far as anyone seems to be concerned. He seems to have bounced around employment wise over the years, working odd jobs occasionally, nothing too interesting. He was a lab technician for a while, then bounced around a couple retail jobs, and then more or less disappears about five years ago. It’s not the most ridiculous thing, Sherlock. He’s a friend of yours, and from what I know of your past and have heard from Mycroft, you picked up your, um, habits, right around university. If Trevor had similar habits, it’s not impossible that he got himself in deep chasing a hit.”

“Victor? An addict?” Sherlock scoffed “Victor’s the reason I managed to graduate. I wanted to drop out and live in the gutter for all it mattered to me by my second year, rather than having to be in that... tedious place another second. He’s not an addict. He doesn’t look like an addict, anyway. Looks healthy, is unnaturally calm considering the fact that he’s been arrested, and he's not going out of his mind needing a hit, and no track marks,” Sherlock listed his observations, the only ones he’s managed to get from his old friend.

“Look, go home. Eat something. Hang out in your mind palace or do whatever it is you do and I’ll call you tomorrow and see if I can get you in to see Trevor before we release him.”

Sherlock felt panic rise in his chest at the prospect of returning to the flat.

“Sherlock?” Lestrade’s voice came, sounding unsure. He had apparently noticed Sherlock’s change in demeanor. “You alright, mate?”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock said, trying to shake himself out of it. “It’s fine.”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade said softly. “Why don’t you call a friend and ask them to have dinner or go to the pub or something?”

“What friends?” Sherlock scoffed. “I only have a handful of people who would even consider associating themselves with me willingly. You’re busy and dull. I detest Mycroft. Mrs. Hudson is tedious. John’s dead.”

Silence hung heavily in the air.

After a few long moments, Lestrade spoke.

“What about Molly? Molly’s nice. And she likes you. I saw her name in that report, she ran that blood sample for you despite the fact that it isn’t really her job, you know. Ask her to dinner as thanks. I’m sure she’ll say yes.”

Sherlock grumbled as he walked out of the Yard at Lestrade’s suggestion. But he couldn’t sit alone in his empty flat. He’d do anything but spend the evening alone, waiting, feeling helpless and unable to figure things out.

_Are you busy? –SH_

_Is everything alright? Do you need to use the lab?_

_No. Have you eaten dinner? –SH_

_No._

_Do you like Chinese? –SH_

* * *

 “I don’t understand. He what?” Lestrade had come down to the lab where he and Molly had been running an experiment involving the formation of bruises on bodies with different iron levels at time of death to give Sherlock some news that he was having a hard time believing.

“He said that Trevor’s been released, because there were no charges against him. And in fact Phil Rogers turned himself in and is currently being prosecuted.”

“Yes, Molly, my hearing is fine, thank you,” Sherlock snapped.

He was trying to be nice. He really was. It turned out Molly wasn’t actually completely insufferable. She was reasonably intelligent, although naïve. She would catch onto things quickly, meaning Sherlock rarely had to explain things, which he hated. And her irritating crush on him seemed to have more or less dissipated, perhaps of her own inspiration or at the very least because she'd gotten the news that Sherlock didn't tend to be into... people like her, and was also mourning the sudden and tragic loss of his best friend and lover.

All of these things were reasons why he supposed he had struck up what people might refer to as a friendship with her over the past week. He supposed that they had probably been friends in the past as well, sort of. Their relationship didn’t seem to change from the one he’d had with her even before he met John. He spent a lot of time in the lab with her running experiments. But now instead of ignoring her attempts to start conversations, he indulged them, and found that occasionally she did offer helpful suggestions.

However, today did not appear to be one of those days.

“Well, you asked,” Molly grumbled meekly.

Sherlock sighed. “Why did Rogers turn himself in? And you told me that you’d found reason to hold Victor longer. You’d promised me that I would get a chance to talk to him. I’ve been waiting all week and what, now he’s just disappeared?”

“Hell if I know what’s going on,” Lestrade shrugged. “I’m sorry about Trevor. Maybe you can find some way to contact him, offer him an olive branch based on old friendship, I don’t know. Maybe there is some Oxford alumni network. But Roger’s has turned himself in, which is kind of massive. Self-surrender. And even weirder, all of his gangs tags were painted over last night.”

“But gangs don’t just decide one night to cease existing. That’s very much how it doesn’t work,” Sherlock said.

“I don’t know. Maybe something scared them.”

“What could possibly be that terrifying?” Sherlock asked incredulously.

“Sherlock,” Molly whispered. “Do you think that he could maybe—?”

Sherlock felt his heart stop at the implication of her words.

“No. That’s not what Moriarty does. He organizes criminals, he doesn’t tear them down. And if they get out of line, he kills them. That’s what the whole case with,” Sherlock stopped. That’s what John had been doing, helping Moriarty dispose of men who were no longer of use to him. But he couldn’t say that. “No move he has ever made in the past would indicate that this has anything to do with him.”

“But what if that’s the point?”


	7. The Mainspring

"You’re terrifying, you know that?”

John and Mary were sat on the sofa in their flat, beers in hand, for a little post-mission-stroke-operation-or-whatever-the-hell-it-was-they-were-doing-now-a-day celebration.

John shrugged. “I was a solider.”

“You were a doctor.”

“So I can break bones while naming them,” John said casually, although inwardly he was well pleased.

He hadn’t felt this good since the first time he’d ran through the streets of London with Sherlock after having dinner at Angelo’s. He felt nearly high all the time, adrenaline in seemingly endless supply.

“Bloody terrifying,” Mary repeated. “And everyone always made Sherlock out to be the psychopath of the pair of you. He wouldn’t hurt a fly though, would he? But you John, I’d hate to be a fly that buzzed itself a little too close to Sherlock Holmes,” Mary teased.

They didn’t talk about Sherlock often, but there didn’t seem to be any rule between them, or at least any rule that Mary seemed to care to adhere to that dictated that Sherlock was someone-who-should-not-be-named. And maybe there was a good reason Mary had been so casual about him, because now John could hear Sherlock’s name be mentioned without feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. Which was definitely a good thing considering he didn’t want anyone to only have to drop the S-word to be able to leave John completely disarmed emotionally and probably physically as well.

“Honestly though John, with the beard and the sunglasses and the new lithe figure of yours you look like you could have been pulled out of some high budget American thriller movie if it weren’t for the fact that you’re so vertically challenged,” Mary laughed, reaching over to him and swiping her hand over the top of his head for effect.

“Fuck off,” John snapped, but he grinned. “Shaving around the scar is annoying and since I don’t have to keep it meticulously clean anymore might as well leave it be,” he explained. Really though he just hated to look at it. He didn’t want to have anyone else see it. It was far too much of an identifying feature. He was deformed. The best he could do is hide the evidence of it. “You try building enough muscle onto a body that was withered enough to give the Great Sherlock I Don’t Eat While I’m Working and All I Do Is Work Holmes a run for his money that you’re not blown over by every gust of wind in less than a month of recovery time. And the sunglasses are cool. Every anti-criminal mastermind needs a signature look.”

“Anti-criminal mastermind, eh? So you admit it?”

John went with another one of his signature shrugs.

“You know, that nickname is going to stick.”

John groaned, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What’s that, Peacemaker? Or is it Mr. Peacemaker? Sir Peacemaker, maybe? Do you expect to be knighted for your efforts in making peace? Or do you like the ‘the’, a la The Terminator? Or would you like your other titles?”

John knocked back the rest of his beer before dropping the can and lunging at Mary. She quickly jumped to her feet, holding her can over her head with a victorious and maniacal grin on her face.

“I’m sorry Doctor Captain The Peacemaker!” she yelped. “Do you think I’ll get a nickname as well, as your trusty side kick? Do you think someday they’ll make a movie about us? The first super hero movie based on a true story?” she laughed.

John collapsed onto the sofa, groaning. “All I said was that I was here to make peace. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say,” he muttered.

“Yes, but to dim witted criminals it’s like handing them a fucking business card.”

John rolled over to stare blankly at the ceiling, stretching out along the sofa. Mary tapped his feet and he begrudgingly lifted them so she could sit down before he placed them back in her lap.

“If they made us into a movie, which they won’t, since you know, we’re so secret that there isn’t even anything to classify, they’d write us as tortured lovers. The guy playing me would fuck the girl playing you probably obscenely in some place where people ought not to fuck.”

“I don’t know, times are changing. I think the demand for a whatever-you-are-sexual who becomes some sort of mastermind vigilante in order to protect his sexy same sex lover is through the roof right now.”

“I think you’ve been pretending that you’re some super spy who doesn’t have a libido that she can’t take care of herself for far too long now and you need to get laid before I find that instead of strategy plans and mission reports on your laptop like there should be there’s a manuscript of an erotic novel starring James Wilson and Sherman Hoyle.”

“Oh no, Sherman is an awful name, not what I had in mind,” Mary said far too seriously for John’s liking. He looked at her in mock horror.

“Oh, because Sherlock is a brilliant one?” he shot back.

“You seem to think so, moaning it in your in bed at night,” she waggled her eyebrows suggestively. 

“Fuck off,” John snapped, but couldn’t help but blush.

       

* * *

“You said we wouldn’t have to go abroad,” John groaned. “In fact, that was one of the first things you told me. ‘All of the people Moriarty has abroad are big fish who the second they realize Moriarty’s home network has been disassembled they’ll drop him,’” John rambled, vaguely trying to impersonate a woman’s voice but failing miserably as he very roughly paraphrased their first meeting. 

Mary was fluttering around the flat, shuffling files together and stuffing them into bags.

“Yes well, we underestimated you and them and Moriarty. But since you were one of the things we underestimated, you can fix it.”

“ _I_ can fix it? I’ve been running around London threatening and assaulting mostly petty criminals into either turning themselves in or going into hiding. Half of them weren't even Moriarty's, and certainly not his caliber, just trying to make a point. None of them had the resources to check and see if I was anything but talk, which is all I am by the way. But arms dealers, foreign mafias, civilian militias, they’ll know that I’m an illusion. All bark and no bite.”

“All bark and no bite? Minor criminals? John, the modesty thing is getting old. Phil Rogers was hardly a minor criminal. And what about those bank robbers? And besides Moran you’ve completely decimated Moriarty’s snipers. And the one that did think you were all talk, god John our man sent us the Yards report of that crime scene that you set up and even Sherlock didn’t seem to have the faintest clue that anything went down there besides exactly what you wanted them to think. Which was by the way certainly not that you scared the poor bugger so much he shot himself in the head rather than have to live in a world where he was caught in between you and Moriarty.”

“That,” John shuddered just thinking about it, “Was an accident. You know I’ve been trying damn hard for there to not be any casualties,” he said defensively. Then his voice dropped lower, “It’s not hard to frame a body to look like a mugging gone wrong if you know what you’re doing.”

“Okay, if you say so. But I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that framing a hacker with ties to Moriarty to the mugging is a bit of a challenge. I mean he was a hacker, John. Tech-y little nerd types don’t usually go around mugging people. Plus, Sherlock almost caught you that night as well.”

“That ‘tech-y little nerd’ was asking for it by hardly being secretive about his illegal firearm in certain circles. God, some people are such morons, compensating for whatever else they think they don’t have by waving around a gun. And you’re the one who taught me to try and bring people down through tax fraud. When I checked his records, the man was broke. All I had to do was wipe the fingerprints off the snipers weapon, plant some of his on it, and then switch the snipers with his so the ballistics would match and the Met can build the rest of the story from the broke but smart and arrogant nervous kid who grew up in a rough neighborhood with a brother in prison for a similar crime, after tipping the police off about him. Plus he had a similar build to me, so Sherlock has absolutely no idea it was me he saw running away from what he would later discover to be a crime scene after I’d fixed it a little bit. It’s all luck and circumstance. Luck and circumstance that I doubt applies when I don’t have home advantage,” John groaned again, letting his head drop back so he stared helplessly at the ceiling.

“John, you’re going to be brilliant, I’m sure. We’re so close to being done. And when we get back there will just be a few more lose ends to tie up, hope that Moriarty and Moran move into position for Sherlock to take them out, and then we’re done. And then happy sexy-times for you, you miserable bastard.”

John felt sick for the first time in months. That’s what it had been since he had last seen Sherlock. He’d spent the past three months tearing down anyone who happened to have been so much as glanced at by Moriarty. He could deal with Mary’s jokes about what Sherlock and him had before, but he still couldn’t stomach the idea of an after. After all, there wouldn’t be one.

“If we’re going abroad, will Victor at least meet up with us again?” John asked. John hadn’t heard anything about Victor since the collision. Mary hadn’t mentioned him again, and John was never one to pry unless he thought something important was being kept from him. But he trusted Mary to tell him the things he needed to know when he needed to know them.

Mary stopped rushing about and blinked at John.

“Um, no, John, he won’t be,” she murmured, hastily stuffing one more file into a rucksack.

“I was just thinking that if he’s been hiding out, surely he could hide out on the continent and help us. I’m sure our man can get us some sort of fixer to arrange for him to be moved out of England and the paperwork to allow him to move around Europe, at least, until we move on to other places and need to cross oceans or more secure borders.”

“John, Victor hasn’t been hiding out, exactly. Well, he’s trying to, but not from the police or anything. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think that it was relevant you know, you’re so busy being some sort of superhero and all,” Mary tried to joke but John wasn’t having any of it.

“Mary,” John groaned, not liking where this was going.

“Well, apparently Mr. Happy Go Lucky I Have No Secrets I’m Just Here to Kick Ass and Save the World did have a secret after all,” Mary began. “I mean, as far as secrets go it’s hardly damning. If you knew some of the things I’ve done, you’d never, well that doesn’t matter,” Mary trailed off.

“What did Victor do?” John asked, losing his patience.

“He didn’t _do_ anything, really. He apparently went to uni with Sherlock. They’re kind of old friends. And well, when Sherlock found him at Roger’s flat, well it was a bit of a strange reunion. Victor was released less than a week after he was arrested, no charges pressed, thanks mostly to you getting Rogers to turn himself in. But Sherlock’s been trying to track him down for months. Keeps getting a hold of him too, occasionally. Vic’s good at disappearing though, but the damage is done.”

John was silent as he considered the information. Sherlock had certainly never mentioned Victor. But then, he never mentioned his past much at all. John got the sense that it was troubled. He knew about his problematic relationship with his brother, his drug use, and his general feeling that the world was often simultaneously overwhelming and boring because of how his brain worked. But other than that John had assumed that Sherlock would tell him things when he wanted or trusted him to know them. Victor must have fallen into the category of things that Sherlock didn't feel was relevant to John. But knowing now that Sherlock had someone like Victor looking out for him during university, in any capacity, was comforting to him. He hated the thought of a nineteen year old Sherlock, feeling tortured and alone and driven out of his mind by stimuli that overwhelmed him, shooting up in his dorm room or in the back of clubs to try and numb the world.

After a few moments he spoke.

“Well, shouldn’t he come with us then, get as far away from Sherlock as possible?”

“And what, risk Sherlock tailing him to the airport to see him meet up with his dead ex-boyfriend? No, it’s a good distraction for Sherlock. In fact, as far as Sherlock’s awareness of any of the Peacemaking business, since as you know the Yard is definitely aware of, Sherlock is determined that Vic is involved. So it’s therefore pertinent that he isn’t.”

John sighed.

“It just would have been nice to have another person to watch my back you know? I imagine there is going to be a lot of me versus small armies of highly trained men.” But then maybe Sherlock having an old friend to watch his now that John wasn't there to make sure he didn't do anything to reckless wasn't a bad thing.

“Don’t worry, our guy has arranged for us to receive a whole bunch of fun tech and shit once we’ve crossed the channel. You’ll have bigger guns and more tear gas and smoke bombs then you’ll know what to do with,” John suppressed a groan. With the amount of times he’d managed an escape through a cloud of smoke as a distraction it was amazing that they weren’t calling him The Magician. Which would have been infinitely worse than the already ridiculous Peacemaker, so he was bloody pleased they weren't. “Plus I am an excellent long range shooter and can hack CCTV feeds better than that little tech nerd of Moriarty’s could ever dream to, so I’ve got your back just fine.”

“What, Mar, are you jealous Moriarty didn’t try and recruit you?” John gasped at the resentment in Mary’s voice, mostly joking.

“No. I mean, well, yes. A little. I’m the best in my field dammit, and not even one sketchy text message to probe my interest. I wouldn’t have said yes or anything, but it’s nice to be appreciated,” she grumbled and John couldn’t help but look horrified.

“You’re a piece of work, you know that? Moriarty doesn’t exactly go around asking for consent before taking what he wants from people. You’d never have been able to say no.”

Mary shrugged but tilted her head in acknowledgment of the truth to John’s point.

“But I’m the most competent piece of work in my field, which isn’t even a real field at all but rather simply just being pretty fucking brilliant,” Mary mumbled defensively to save face.

John rolled his eyes before standing up to go pack his bags.

* * *

John was sore. He was pretty sure at least seventy five percent of his body was covered in bruises. Honestly, he was far too old for this kind of shit. He was getting way too close to forty and his body was quickly becoming useless.

Things had been going pretty well, but apparently Mary and their man had been starting him off easy.

There had been a couple more hackers in France who had been pretty easy to shut down. It turned out that these bigger fish kinds of operations were easier to take down than John had initially thought because while the people involved may be been busy and strong enough to not be completely owned by Moriarty, they were also heavily sought after by governments in their own country. All he’d have to do was help Mary with a bit of tailing and leave the information somewhere the French government would stumble upon it and think it to be their own intelligence and they arrested the group of hackers without John having to meet any of them face to face.

The same kind of thing happened with a group of counterfeiters in Denmark.

It wasn’t until John found himself chained to a wall in Serbia that he realized that this wasn’t going to be as easy as he for a moment had allowed himself to hope. John had spent twelve hours being tortured before Mary was able to stage a rescue. It had been the first time either of them had killed in the name of bringing down Moriarty. John had known that Mary was more determined to keep John’s hands clean of blood than her own, but when Mary made her way through the hovel of a building that John was being held in, taking out ten men with ten bullets, all shots to kill, a wave of the reality of what they were doing overcame John.

Sherlock had liked to refer to what they did as a game, but this wasn’t a game at all.

From that point on, it became hard. It wasn’t him getting high off of waves of adrenaline as he whispered threats while beating the crap out of the criminals of London before going back to the flat with Mary to have a couple beers and tease each other about any minor missteps they had made. No this was work. It was like war. Worse than war. At least in war he had an entire army behind him.

But three continents, more than a dozen countries, a new bullet wound (it had only been a graze), a couple more stab wounds, a broken and rebroken nose healed just crooked enough that no one would think anything of it but John would always remember, countless scratches and bruises, and nearly two months later, John was back in London. Mary always joked that the other guy always got it way worse, which was true. But the other guys only had to face him once. John on the other hand had to face an endless stream of other guys, and it had taken its toll.

Had it really been almost six months at this point since the last time he and Sherlock had ran through the streets together? Since the first time John had met Moriarty? Since the first time he and Sherlock had kissed?

He wished that he could still have that life. That life where he and Sherlock thought that they were all but invincible. They may not have had any time together as more than friend’s pre-Moriarty, but even before that moment so long ago now when Sherlock had kissed him in the park, there was always that unspoken fondness, dare he even think maybe a kind of love, between them.

But John wasn’t the same person he was back then. That John’s eyes twinkled at the mention of danger. That John would follow Sherlock to the ends of the earth and couldn’t live without him. That John wanted to be consumed by the Sherlock bubble, that infamous space that John had spent the past year avoiding. Victor had been lucky enough to get sucked back into it when a part of John still wished somehow it had been him instead.

But that wasn’t the case and now he was so close to being done with it all. Christ, what he would give to be able to take a holiday.

Mary had agreed to let him out for a walk.

They were back at their old flat, which was caked in a layer of dust but otherwise eerily the same. What kind of money did their man have to pay eight months of rent in London rather than have to deal with the minor inconvenience of moving it in and out of storage? Were tax dollars being spent on this?

But Mary now knew at this point not to bother arguing with John anymore about concerns for his safety. All those months ago there was a sense that she needed to protect John, from himself and the world. But now John was more or less the most feared man in the world among certain circles, and was virtually unrecognizable. Skin tanned and hair bleached lighter than it had even been in the UK from the sun of warmer climates, beard still intact with rather shaggy hair that while he couldn’t bear the feeling of growing much past his ears he hadn’t had time to otherwise keep up, and a muscular build to match months upon months of what had seemed to be near constant hand to hand combat, wall scaling, and parkour level chases that made him appear much bigger than he used to, even without any added height. John was now, mentally and physically, a very different man.

Mary said it didn’t have anything to do with the hair and the muscles, but the way that John carried himself. Before he was unassuming, and purposefully so. Only flashes of John’s true nature would be seen, and then quickly covered by meek shrugs and oatmeal jumpers. But now, John held himself like he “dared the world to contest that he owned it, and would take absolutely no shit,” Mary had explained eloquently and annoyingly. He didn't even know if he owned a jumper, having traded them in for t-shirts, button down shirts, fitted jackets, and anything else that might make him look like he knew what the fuck he was doing and perhaps like he did in fact, "own the world."

But he of course didn’t feel like he owned the world. He felt tired. But he couldn’t bear to lie around the flat, so instead he was wandering the streets of London rather aimlessly.

“Victor!” he heard a familiar voice that he hadn’t heard in so so long shout. He froze. Instictually he began to scan his surrounding when suddenly someone grabbed his arm. John reached for his gun from his shoulder holster and found himself pointing it in the face of one Victor Trevor as the other man held him against a wall.

“Long time no see Watson,” Victor smirked and John found himself lowering his weapon after Victor released him. They stepped away from the wall. “You really shouldn’t be here. You look like shit, by the way. I mean, in kind of an overworked action star kind of way, but still shit," Victor grinned. "But I supposed I’d have fared worse if I’d spent the past year building a reputation as the most feared man in all the world.”

“Victor,” John started, but the other man cut him off.

“No, get out of here. He’s honestly right behind you, about five meters,” John’s stomach dropped as he watched Victor’s eyes move over his shoulder to look at something, someone in the not so far distance. The man grabbed his hand and pulled John close into a friendly embrace,giving him a rough pat on the back. "Just because you're back in London and the world is quaking at your feet, don't let your guard down," Victor whispered quickly, before he drew back and dropped John's hand.

“I’m sure we’ll meet again soon, Peacemaker,” Victor said with a smirk, gently shoving John around him before taking a few steps in the direction of Sherlock.

“What do you want, Holmes?” John heard Victor grunt.

It took everything John had left in him to get himself to move. He turned down and alley nearby and pressed his back against the wall, hoping that Sherlock and Victor would walk past. Soon enough he could hear their conversation again.

“It was no one, just an old friend,” he heard Victor say.

“Related to the Peacemaker?” Sherlock asked. He could hear the excitement in Sherlock’s voice. God, he sounded so young and naïve. John knew that Sherlock was only a bit more than a handful of years younger than him and well into his thirties, but he could be so childlike at times. John found himself smiling fondly.

“Really, Holmes, I thought that you had some tact. Do you think that if I had anything to do with that guy, which I’ve told you I don’t, that I’d tell you now? After what, accidentally running into the Peacemaker himself in the streets?”

“Well, I don’t know, I just, I thought that there was something familiar about the way he stood,” Sherlock snapped, but there was a meekness to it.

“The way he stood?”

“Yeah, kind of like J-,” Sherlock stopped. “Like a soldier.” John thought his heart had stopped.

“My friend has a background in military, that doesn’t mean he’s taking down some of the city’s best criminal’s right under your nose. And come on, ‘The Peacemaker’ hasn’t stolen any cases from you in months.”

“But the only ones left are so boring,” John heard Sherlock groan distantly before the pair walked out of earshot.

John found himself breathing heavily, like he’d just been in pursuit of Argentinian arms dealer who had somehow manage to scale a six story building, free climbing. Of course Sherlock was upset about the existence of the Peacemaker. Of course Sherlock had thought that The Peacemaker was competition. John couldn't help but roll his eyes. Some things never changed. God, if only Sherlock knew. John could imagine coming out from behind the wall right then and announcing that he was not only alive but the legendary Peacemaker and Sherlock would be more mad at him for his vigilante efforts than he was about lying about his death or working with Moriarty. It was a comforting thought, although John feared that unfortunately he'd burned far more bridges than that with Sherlock.

He had known of course that he was closer to Sherlock than he’d been in a long time, but he thought he was talking in terms of at least a few miles. Not a few meters.

John steadied his breath and stepped out from the alley, turning in the opposite direction from the way that Sherlock and Victor had gone. He’d made it a few blocks before he heard another familiar voice.

“Boss has been looking for you,” a deep voice hissed and then something collided with the back of his head and the world went dark.

 

* * *

 

John woke up with a groan. He’d unfortunately become so used to waking up in captive situations over the past few months that he instantly began his routine for such situations without thinking about it. He began to scan his surroundings, realizing he was upright, likely strung from the ceiling, and began looking for means of escape. He appeared to be in some sort of old warehouse or factory, judging by the high ceilings and large, occasionally broken windows. There was a set of double doors on the other side of the long room. He then tested his restraints. Chains jangled above him. Leather cuffs attached to his wrists. Leather cuffs. John froze. It was then he finally remembered where he was this time and the panic set in. _Moran. Boss._

 _Fuck_.

He was strung up exactly like he was the last time he had met Moriarty.

John couldn’t even begin to fathom exactly how screwed he was before a voice he had hoped to never hear again sang out in the room.

“Johnny-boy! I’m so glad you could join me! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you! And boy have you been busssyy,” Moriarty said the last word slowly, holding out the two syllables. John could feel the man behind him, not yet touching him, but John could none the less feel his presence.

Another second past and whatever distance there had been between them was closed as Moriarty pressed himself along Johns back, grinding his pelvis into John’s arse and John’s stomach instantly began to churn. Hands reached around to rake along his chest and it was then he realized his shirt had already been removed. The hands wandered over the new scars along his chest, before moving to his biceps and taking time to observe his new bullet wound.

“Either you’re far better than even I ever gave you credit for, Johnny, or I was trusting entirely the wrong people,” Moriarty mused as he swung himself around John so that he now stood in front of him. He stood farther away now, but his fingers still reached out to trace along John’s scars.

“What I had Seb do to you seems inconsequential now though, so I suppose you shouldn’t get all the credit. I see you’re hiding the bit I’m most proud of though, my _gift_ to you,” Moriarty reached up and stroked along John’s jaw where the scar lay hidden under his beard.

“But I think the point is John, I underestimated by a lot, and here I thought I’d been the only one to see your potential. After all, I put you to work, and then I tried to kill you. No one else saw you as enough of a threat to do that, did they? I mean, Sherlock played games with you, I supposed. But they were only games. You know that now though, don’t you?”

John stayed silent, horrified that Moriarty’s words were mimicking his own previous thoughts.

“But you survived, and I imagine that I can’t break you anymore now than I could before, though it’s for a different reason now than before. Before it was because you were already broken and couldn’t imagine a world without Sherlock, wasn’t it? Now though, it’s entirely the other way around. You can’t imagine the world without _you!_  Where would the world be without you, Johnny?” Moriarty asked his voice far too calm. John knew it was the calm before the storm. He was right.

“IT WOULD BE IN THE PALM OF _MY_ HAND” Moriarty shouted in his face, a stream of hot breath warming his cheeks. He then stepped away from John and began to pace in front of him.

“Don’t think I didn’t know what was going on, Johnny-boy. It did take me far too long, but by the time you got to California I’d known.” John tried to remember California but he couldn’t. Maybe it was a corrupt business man with lots of off shore accounts that had been financially backing Moriarty? It didn’t seem to matter now.  “Of course I’d known,” Moriarty continued, “But I didn’t figure it out until too late. What could I do? I was back in England at that point. So I watched you, for five months I watched you topple the rest of my network like dominoes. AND YOU LEFT ME WITH NOTHING!”

“I felt the same this time last year. Me tied up just like this, you thinking you owned the world. But I rebuilt,” John murmured, not bothering to look up at the other man. He kept his head hung and his eyes closed.

“And now, so will I,” Moriarty whispered. John could feel that he was close again, but kept his eyes closed and head down, not in defeat but because he knew that Moriarty would be frustrated by John's refusal to engage. “But you rebuilt by tearing down didn’t you Johnny? And so I must do the same, shouldn’t I? You tore me down and climbed atop the pieces. So it only makes sense that I’ll have to do the same.”

The terror that began to rise in John was like nothing he’d ever felt before. To think that all the work that he’d done over the past year could possibly be for nothing, it was worse than any other time he’d found himself in a similar situation. He didn’t even think death when he’d been drowning in the Thames had been so absolutely terrifying.

“Don’t worry John, I know now that killing you won’t work and that I can’t leave it to someone else to take care of you. It would only make sense, since it was those hands that tore _me_ apart.”

What came next, and would continue for what could have been an eternity for all John knew, was what John could only describe as agony. For lack of a better word, Moriarty began to pummel him. First with fists and knives, striking repeatedly into his body as it hung. The man was fast and thorough, leaving not an inch untouched. Eventually the chains were released and John fell to the floor with a heavy thump. Moriarty began to kick until John was sure that every single rib cracked and one of his lungs was punctured. The man was quiet the whole time throughout the assault. John was quiet as well, only letting out the occasional groan when the air was knocked out of him again and again.

Finally, the blows stopped. One final kick and John was rolled over onto his back. John blinked up to see Moriarty standing over him, a foot on either side of his hips, holding was looked to be his mobile.

“Smile for the camera, Johnny!” Moriarty sang, then raised a foot and smashed it into John’s skull and John saw no more as he lost consciousness.


	8. Winding Up

Sherlock was growing angry. For a while he had just felt the usual boredom and the resulting frustration, but now it was blooming into full blown rage. The world seemed to be falling apart around him. Or, rather, the world seemed to be doing just fine. Too fine, actually. His job, however, was falling apart. And his job, the work, was his world. So to find that there didn’t seem to be a need for him anymore, when he was supposed to be the world’s only consulting detective, solving crimes when the police are out of their depths, which previously had been always, was becoming increasingly difficult to bare.

It’s not, of course, that London was free of crime. People still murdered their exes and their business associates. Money was still being stolen by employees from their companies. People would still go missing. Children were still molested by their coach or their babysitter. But there was no _interesting_ crime anymore. And not just because it was a slow week that was stretching into a slow month, but rather because someone else seemed to be doing Sherlock and the Met’s job better than they could. There was, of course, no conclusive evidence of this yet. But it had to be the case, Sherlock just knew.

After all, the amount of people arrested for petty crimes who would turn out to have involvement in organized crime was abnormally high. Particularly when some of them would come in on a charge that if convicted to maximum sentencing would only get them a year but then would flat out confess to some other crime that held a minimum sentencing of anywhere between five and fifty times that if convicted.  And he didn’t even want to talk about the number of people who were just turning themselves in or the groups of criminals whose activity had been being tracked by entire divisions of the Met for ages seeming to disappear without a trace overnight.

The last straw for Sherlock had been when a serial killer turned up at the Yard, carrying a box of his trophies from his victims with a map drawn to where the rest of their bodies could be found. The idea of such a thing happening was completely ridiculous. And the notion there was something out there, something scary enough to cause a serial killer to turn himself in, was horrific.

And if Sherlock had the faintest clues what that thing was, he’d have been bouncing off the walls with glee. But he _hadn’t_ even the faintest clue, and he was going mad.

Sherlock didn’t have the slightest of leads as to what was causing this supposed miracle. None of the influx of criminals pouring in to be processed had a single thing to say about what led to their arrests. They all were quiet. Too quiet. The worst thing though was that there was some sort of look in their eyes. It was the same look every time. Fear. Or maybe it was relief. Sherlock saw it, but he couldn’t deduce anything from it. But it was there, again and again with every new arrest.

Lestrade was insistent that there was nothing that pointed anyone towards the existence of some sort of vigilante, nor that this was a move of Moriarty’s. Sherlock knew that the Yard wasn’t thick enough to think that this was just some sort of coincidence. What Lestrade meant when he insisted that there was nothing to investigate was, “Sherlock, don’t be a bloody idiot and go prodding somewhere you don’t belong. If we get a definitive lead, we’ll take care of it, and call you when we need you.” Lestrade may have been a man of few spoken words, but he had always had a habit of silently telling Sherlock off.

In fact, if Lestrade had his way, which was never when it came to Sherlock, Sherlock probably wouldn’t even know as much as he did about the London’s ascension into the light, as the Met had taken to calling it like London had been Gotham all this time . Sherlock though stubbornly hung out around the yard whenever he could, and got himself access to files in any way, legal or not, he could manage.

He hoped that by hanging around he would see someone interesting brought in. Very few of the new arrests fell into Lestrade’s division anyway, since no more interesting major crime appeared to be occurring, none the less a homicide.

And on top of everything else, Michael Huxley, despite Roger’s surrender, was still missing. And Roger’s claimed to have nothing to do with the kid, although he had spat out the young former hackers name with disdain.

The only interesting definitive case Sherlock had gotten that month, and it had hit a dead end.

He was going to go insane.

He did however have one lead, kind of anyway. He wasn't sure what this lead could well, lead to, but his old university friend, Victor Trevor, was definitely suspicious. But Trevor had disappeared after he was released and Sherlock didn’t have any way to find him. He even went as far as contacting Oxford to see if they had an address or any contact information on file for Victor Trevor just out of hope that perhaps maybe he was an active alum, despite Sherlock’s strong doubts that such would be the case. But he, like Sherlock, appeared to have more or less disowned the university the second he’d earned his degree.

He put out a search for him within his homeless network, although he wasn’t entirely up to trusting them after the Torture Chamber mishap. Granted, that was a simple misunderstanding for normal people to make. The intel he got from his network was usually only partial and riddled with normal people misunderstandings. In the past it had always been himself who had been able to sort out the normal people inaccuracies in deductions with ease. It was his fault he’d made a fool of himself and Lestrade.

Sherlock was on the way to the Yard, making his journey on foot from Baker Street out of hopes to kill time or maybe just maybe to happen to witness an interesting crime along the way. His goal for that day was to try and get the Dimmock, who had arrested a man who turned out to have a background in the military and was rumored to be a hired assassin, specializing as a sniper, on breaking and entering and attempted burglary, to not hate him so much.

However, this had been Sherlock’s goal for the last week, and he was more or less unsuccessful, mostly because the second Dimmock had begun to catch on to his passive arse-kissing Sherlock had had to save face by showing up at one of his crime scenes and solving it in all of about thirty seconds. This, however, only got him arrested for tampering with evidence and he’d spent six hours in a jail cell before Mycroft had come to bail him out and Lestrade later convinced Dimmock to drop the charges.

He was nearly to the NSY, about to turn onto Broadway, when someone passing in the opposite direction slipped something into his hand. Sherlock stopped dead, unfolding the slip of paper that he’d been handed.

_Maplin, Tottenham Court Rd, M/F 08:00-14:00, Th 13:00-19:00, Sa 12:00-18:00, valid 2 wks._

What day was it? Sherlock clicked on his mobile. It was half noon on a Friday. If traffic wasn’t complete shit, he should easily make it in time. Abandoning his plans at the Yard, he hailed a cab and headed off to Fitzrovia.

 

* * *

 

He was sitting in a Taylor-Walker pub, its given name having something to do with Arms, not like that narrowed it down, in Bloomsbury. Across the table from him, Victor Trevor was sitting and eating a Steak and Ale pie and drinking a beer. Or was it technically an ale? Stout? Sherlock didn’t know and didn’t care. Victor had come back from the bar after placing his order with two of whatever it was and placed one in front of Sherlock, but Sherlock hadn’t touched his.

“So, Holmes, you’ve been solving crimes with the police? Good for you mate,” Victor grinned at him before stuffing another forkful of pie into his mouth. “Funny we keep running into each other after not seeing each other in what, a dozen years? What are the chances?”

Sherlock glared at the other man.

“Yes, what are the chances?” he muttered. “So, what have you been up to since university?” he asked, probing in his best normal person small talk voice.

“Oh, been bouncing around a bit, you know. Serious jobs turned out to not be for me. Just kind of make money when I need to or get too bored. Mostly when I get bored. Could probably live off family money if I wanted to, but it feels good to earn your money. I’m not quite as good at turning hobbies into full time jobs as you appear to have been,” Victor shrugged.

They had been playing this game for an hour already. Sherlock had showed up at the Maplin that Victor was apparently working at and the man had been perfectly jovial, telling Sherlock that he got off work in half an hour so if he wanted to wait around they could go get a drink and catch up. Sherlock had impatiently feigned interest in cameras while waiting for Victor to get off. Victor had chattered away as he’d led Sherlock up the street to the pub about the annoying customers and his crazy boss, barely letting Sherlock get a word in.

“And the gang involvement?” Sherlock ground out, finally jumping straight to the point.

“Oh, that. Of course you’re curious. I mean, that whole thing was a bit of a lie, I guess, though don’t tell your friends at the Yard that, yeah? A friend of mine, old co-worker, was calling in a favor. I’ve always been good at picking locks, something I learned from you actually. I was just supposed to look around, grab a file. Not something I usually get involved in. I’m glad it’s all been sorted out. I just didn’t want to have to compromise my friend. Could have been dangerous for him, you know. Really good guy, just a bit unlucky I guess.”

He was lying, Sherlock knew. He had to be lying, or at least distorting the truth. Sherlock looked at Victor, taking him in for the thousandth time that afternoon, going over his deductions again. He’d changed out of his blue Maplin polo shirt and into a t-shirt with some sort of logo on it that Sherlock supposed the average person might recognize as belonging to a band or music group. He’d also had a denim jacket on that he’d taken off when they sat down and was now carelessly bunched along the back of his seat. He was still wearing the black trousers and trainers that he’d been working in. His hair had grown out a bit since when he’d first seen him two weeks ago, the sides of his head kept neatly trimmed, but the hair on the top of his head was a bit longer, something that Sherlock knew was a popular style among the late teens and twenties set currently.

 _Dressing a bit younger than his age, could probably pass for mid to late twenties_ , Sherlock observed. _Maybe because he’s a little embarrassed that someone with his background is still bouncing around retail jobs, maybe because he’s looking to impress someone younger than him. Maybe his coworkers are all in that age range and he wants to fit in. He’s working in the neighborhood near UCL, maybe he wants to blend in on the streets. Maybe he’s having a premature mid-life crisis about aging_.

No matter what it was, Sherlock couldn’t seem to make any sort of conclusive deduction from Victor’s appearance. He could hardly even make a good guess. And even still, none of those possibilities had any discernibly meaningful implications.

He kept scanning, looking for anything else. _Gum on the bottom of his shoe, ground in and dried up having been there for a while._ The trainers were otherwise well taken care of and cleaned regularly. This indicated that Victor hadn’t taken his shoes off recently, otherwise he would have noticed the gum and scraped it off. _Was on his feet all for a long time, then_. Which made sense, because he’d been at work all morning. Which was something that Sherlock already knew.

He looked again, this time harder. Trying to find any out of place detail. _Ah ha!_ Paint on the bottom of his shirt. No, not just paint. Primer. He’d been painting walls recently.

“Are you trying to deduce me, Holmes?” Victor asked, still grinning at Sherlock with eyes twinkly mischievously in a way that Sherlock was coming to despise. “I’m not a very interesting person, mate. Everything interesting there is to know about me, you probably already know, and not because there’s a certain kind of mud on my shoes or tan lines on my neck but because we were friends for nearly three years and I, perhaps unfortunately, haven’t changed much since then.”

Sherlock said nothing for a moment. “So where are you living?” he asked finally.

“Just moved recently,” Sherlock couldn’t help but feel the corner of his lip twitch in satisfaction. He’d gotten something right.  “I’m kind of in between places, actually, looking for a flat of my own or at least a not completely weird flat mate. I don’t know how long I’ll be in London though, anyway. But, you know, London real estate is tough and hardly affordable. I’m currently renting a room from an older couple in Crouch End. I’ve been helping them out around the house as well as part of an unofficial part of my let agreement to keep the rent down. It’s not exactly close to work, but it is allowing me to even save up a bit,” Trevor supplied in that casual way that was driving Sherlock mad. “Where have you got yourself set up?”

“I’ve got a flat on Baker Street,” Sherlock said dismissively. Victor whistled.

“How’d you get that set up? Is Myc doing well?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and puffed up defensively. Yes, Mycroft paid him for things, but he didn’t pay for his things. At least not usually.  More often Sherlock found ways to extort money from his brother. But he wasn’t some spoilt posh kid taking handouts from family money, and certainly not from Mycroft. _He wasn’t_.

“Yes, well I worked out a deal with the landlady, she owed me a favor. And I had a flat mate.”

“Oh, really?” Victor seemed to hesitate, as if thinking something over. “Found someone mad enough to put up with you?”

Sherlock froze. Mad enough. Yes, John had been mad enough.

“Are you okay?” Victor asked, apparently having picked up on Sherlock’s internal distress.

“Hm, yes, I think I best be going,” Sherlock said quickly standing up, taking his coat from where it was draped over the back of his chair and shrugging it on.

“Alright mate, we should do this again sometime. It was nice to catch up.” Sherlock’s brain panicked, going into overload. It had been doing that increasingly often now a day. Even one faint allusion to John, and Sherlock would feel like the world was crashing down on him. He felt like he couldn’t breathe at the weight of it all.

“Holmes, are you okay?” he heard a voice from somewhere distant. Sherlock found himself gripping the back of the chair he’d just stood up from to keep himself from collapsing. Then there was a weight on top of it. “Hey, Sherlock,” the voice was softer now, “Relax. I can compile a rather long list of people who would kill me if they found out I somehow managed to break that funny brain of yours, including a man who's probably one of the most feared in London.”

 _The most feared man in London?_ Sherlock’s mind wrapped around that detail and began to ground itself. It felt less like his mind palace had been caught up in a tornado, and Sherlock began to take inventory. Moriarty? Or the man who was making London's most wanted list turn themselves in? 

"Your brother, you over-analyzing fool," Victor said. 

Sherlock's shoulders relaxed. Mycroft’s power in the government wasn’t exactly common knowledge, but Victor did know Sherlock about as well as anyone did. But every other thing Victor said felt like a lie.

He’d revisit the thought later, but right now he needed to get out of this god forsaken pub and go into his mind palace. He’d reconnect with Victor later when he had developed a new approach to extracting information from the man.

“Ah, yes. Lovely seeing you again,” Sherlock muttered shoving his hands in his pockets defensively. They ran across something fine and jagged. A business card. John had printed a bunch up a while ago and had taken to sticking them in Sherlock’s pockets when he thought Sherlock wouldn’t notice him lingering by the coat stand. Sherlock himself of course never gave anyone a business card, but he kept them stored in his pocket because even before their official dalliance began, Sherlock had to admit he had gotten off a bit on the feeling to John’s fingers brushing across his hips through the lining of his jacket whenever John would reach into his pockets to extract a card to give to a potential client.

His mind began to whirl again at the thought of John’s touch.

“Um, here’s a card, that’s my mobile on it. Text me,” he said, pulling the business card out of his pocket and dropping it on the table in front of Victor before flying out the door.

 

* * *

 

He was going to be successful today. Full stop. Today was the day.

He couldn’t take it anymore, his mind was overloaded, constantly. He’d voiced his frustrations to his brother, not intentionally mind you, only in a fit of frustration after a great deal of probing on Mycroft’s part. He’d been told that it sounded like what Sherlock was experiencing were panic attacks. He knew about panic attacks. He’d seen John have far too many. But the thing about panic attacks was that they were supposed to end. Fifteen minutes of feeling like the world is collapsing in on you and you’re dying, and then you catch your breath and start to move on.

But for Sherlock, it never seemed to stop.

He’d continued trying to distract himself by trying to figure out Victor, but the man continued to be as allusive as ever. Victor did text Sherlock, as requested, the following day. It was annoyingly friendly.

_You left in a hurry yesterday, everything alright?_

_Yes, fine. –SH_

_Alright, mate. I get off work tonight at 1800, drinks? I know a cool spot._

_Yes, text me the address. –SH_

Sherlock hadn’t doubted that whatever place Victor had in mind was _cool_. Sherlock himself however wasn’t sure if he, despite his well fitted suits and general air of his own personal trademarked blend of boredom, ambivalence, and distain, if he wanted to be cool. At least not Victor Trevor’s brand of cool, which he assumed would involve lots of crowds and loud noises and some sort of house beer on tap that tasted of piss.

Sherlock was surprised however to find that the place he met Victor at was relatively quiet. The after work rush that left every pub in London overflowing onto the sidewalks had died down. The pub, tucked away down by Embankment, had the kind of atmosphere that made Sherlock’s bespoke suit look not out of place, but was also laid back enough for Trevor with his dark jeans, rumpled cotton button down, and trainers. The pub had a decent view of the river and skyline on the south side of the river, and tables by the windows were all occupied, but Sherlock and Trevor had occupied a small booth in the back corner of the pub and more or less had their privacy. Trevor had ordered a bottle of wine for them to split. It was relatively cheap, part of some offer the pub was running, but palatable, and Sherlock deigned to sip at his glass.

The conversation had gone nowhere helpful. Victor reminisced about some incident from university that Sherlock had deleted involving Sherlock stealing a car to drive out to a local farm to “borrow” a pig carcass to run experiments on. Apparently, the corpse had experienced some sort of rupture and intestinal fluid and blood left a massive stain in the trunk of the car. The car, as why would Sherlock steal the unlocked 1980 Citroën 2CV that Victor had apparently suggested when he could steal the Jag, had belonged to the son of some politician with an OBE. Apparently, the twat had become convinced that someone had been murdered in the back of his car. A full investigation was immediately launched, but came to a screeching halt when the results came back from the lab and pig’s blood was found. Sherlock was never caught. Oh, how the tabloids had been in an uproar when they found out, Victor told Sherlock, laughing uproariously _. A Swine Line_ : _Son of MP involved in a Murder most Porky?_ The headline, as far as UK tabloid headlines go, was not even bad enough to be good.

They had continued on in this fashion, meeting once or twice a week for drinks, Victor telling Sherlock nothing that he wanted to hear and allowing himself to get progressively drunker each time.

At first it was agitating to Sherlock, who only grew frustrated when his brain slowed down with the fog of alcohol. But he found that if he pushed it far enough he could turn his mind completely off. But waking up with a headache that wouldn’t quit and to find Trevor in his kitchen cheerily making tea and waiting to shove a paracetamol down his throat while he recounted Sherlock’s blackout adventures was not remotely worth it.

The tales included things like getting into fights with statues (Sherlock could confirm with his sore knuckles) or being goaded into a half arsed attempt at a pole dance in an underground train car by a group of equally drunken university aged girls and of course Trevor himself (Sherlock made sure such a thing could most definitely under no circumstances be confirmed by anyone ever by quickly deleting the video Trevor showed him on his phone of the incident before the other man could even protest).

But alcohol was not Sherlock’s drug of choice and his stint with alcoholism was not satisfying. He wanted his brain to work better, to be sharper and able to tune into the details that mattered while blocking out the rest. He couldn’t live without it anymore. No cases, no John, to distract him, he couldn’t take it anymore.

So he began searching out a hit. He’d be out with Victor one night and began searching out the usual spots where one could find dealers, the toilets of clubs or tucked into alleyways, but Victor would show up, usually with a girl on his arm, and demand Sherlock come for a round of shots. Or he’d claim to have run into someone that Sherlock would just _have_ to meet, usually men, obviously gay, and not at all remotely Sherlock’s type, considering they were not 5’8” with blond hair and blue eyes, well-built arms and shoulders but a growing slightly pudgy beer belly, a toothy smile that a man like Sherlock could no way ever possibly deserve, and risen from the dead.

He’d given up finding it at night, heading out to those parts of town where he knew he could get what he wanted at any hour, but Mrs. Hudson would snag him before he could make his way out of 221, demanding tea. Or he’d get a text from Lestrade claiming he was needed down at the Yard, but upon Sherlock’s eager arrival, was only handed him a stack of paperwork that needed Sherlock’s signature. He nearly got halfway across town to his destination once before a black car showed up, Mycroft tucked inside with a knowing look on his face, but thankfully he did not voice any suspicions he may have had.

If Sherlock had been a different man, perhaps he would have taken all of these interventions as a sign. But Sherlock did not believe in any sort of world order. There was no fate or destiny. Notions like “soul mates” where just societal ideas that encouraged the continuation of the traditional family model. It was a ridiculous concept that relationships were built of innate bonds rather than common interests and time and sexual attraction.

He believed in love, in the sense that love didn’t exactly have a set definition so if someone said they felt it than they probably did. He had been beginning to think that he could be one of those people who claimed to be in love.

But now the only thing he could come to love again was cocaine, he was sure. Biologically addiction probably lit up the same areas in the brain as “love.” That wasn’t the kind of information Sherlock kept in his mind palace of course, so the truth in that fact was debatable. But surely it was anecdotally true enough to make the point.

And Sherlock mostly just really didn’t fucking care about anything else anymore.

He was in a part of town that referring to as a “bad part of town” would be too generous. It was a neighborhood he hadn’t visited in several years, but it still looked exactly the same. And he was banking on that fact. He’d done some research, and there was nothing to indicate that this particular, well, crack den had been experienced a police bust that would lead to a change in location.

He’d considered not going quite this out of the way. There were of course ways to get illicit substances without going instantly too far into throws of addiction right away, but clearly the more casual approach, the picking a few grams on a street corner, locking himself away in his flat, and digging out his old equipment from where he’d hidden it under the floorboards, was not going to work. Too many people to come by unannounced and drag him off to rehab, assuming he could even manage to get the drugs without interruption in the first place, as had become a problem.

He had always known that Mycroft’s habit of barging in unannounced was a habit born specifically out of checking up on him post rehab to make sure he wasn’t high or otherwise gone AWOL. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade at the heart of it probably came around unannounced for much the same reason, but they at least usually came up with other excuses that were occasionally not completely irritating. But now Trevor had taken up that annoying habit of crashing on Sherlock’s couch whenever he didn’t feel like going back to his own less centrally located room or would pop around after work to drag him out to anything that he could come up with in terms of entertainment.

So Sherlock was going to take the biggest dose he could handle after being clean for so long, collapse onto a filthy mattress, and retreat into his mind palace until he felt like it was back enough in order that maybe he could go out into the world and be able to make sense of it. He’d even traded in his usual Saville Row kit for a hoodie, track pants, and trainers in an effort of better blending in in the territory that he was venturing into and for the comfort of an extended stay.

The streets in this part of town, at least at this time of day, which was roughly the middle of the afternoon, were empty. Once or twice a car had driven past, the kind of moderately older, but certainly not in a classic way, carefully repaired to be as flashy as possible want-to-be sports cars that had a habit of blaring music or revving their engines as they passed. Otherwise, though, not another soul in sight.

Which is why when a gunshot echoed, Sherlock found himself sprinting off in the direction of the sound. Never mind that he was in a rough neighborhood, and standard wisdom stated that one should run in the opposite direction of gunfire, Sherlock’s heart beat faster as adrenaline took over.

 _A crime!_ In a neighborhood that had previously been occupied, coincidently, by the very gang that Roger’s led that had more or less completely disappeared from. In fact, there was more or less no major organized crime going on in the city right now. Maybe Roger’s gang had found new leadership and was making a comeback, or maybe it was merely a boring domestic disturbance. But as Sherlock ran hope bloomed within him that maybe, just maybe something interesting was going on.

He rounded a corner to face and alleyway just in time to see a man standing over another mans crumpled body. Before Sherlock could think he found himself crying out. Later, Sherlock would kick himself for not remaining quiet, not taking more time to observe the crime scene, not taking a moment to text Lestrade to report the homicide. But in that moment he would only notice the way the man froze at the sound of his voice and then without even a glance backwards, would take off running down the opposite end of the alley.

Sherlock took off after him, trying desperately to overtake him. He scanned through the maps of London that existed in his mind, trying to come up with some street he could chase the man down to corner him, or any other advantage he could possibly use to tackle the man. But the man’s knowledge of the area seemed to rival Sherlock’s. In fact, he knew things Sherlock didn’t. He’d climb up over skips to get out of the sight line of CCTV cameras, he knew the code to a security gate that led them through a private garden, he knew which fire escapes led up to vacant roof tops that had good access points to jump to the neighboring buildings.

The adrenaline began to wear off and Sherlock began to lag farther and farther behind the other man, until finally the other man turned a corner and by the time Sherlock reached it and turned in the direction the man had gone, he was nowhere in sight. He also, Sherlock realized, happened to be nearly two miles from the crime scene. He cursed and whipped out his phone, texting Lestrade.

 

* * *

 

“I’d like to speak to that friend of yours, the one that asked you to break into Roger’s flat,” Sherlock said, trying to sound assertive.

“I’m sorry, I don’t take demands from children,” Victor responded.

“I’m not a child,” Sherlock hissed.

“Oh, really, I do believe that your brother has commissioned me to babysit you after you were found en route to a crack den,” Trevor quipped.

“I wasn’t _found_ en route to a crack den!” Victor looked blankly at Sherlock, clearly not caring about the technicality to how Mycroft had assumed his brothers intentions after witnessing a crime in a rather notorious part of town, and Sherlock sputtered. “I can’t believe that you took the money, anyway! John didn’t take the money,” Sherlock grumbled.

“Then John is a far better man than I am,” Victor responded, sounding strangely reverent. Sherlock catalogued that detail for later analysis, but otherwise thought little of it, considering that the conservatory of his mind palace was overrun with hundreds of bits of information for later analysis. He really should make a new room especially for them.

“Please, I have a hunch about him!”

“Since when does the great Sherlock Holmes have hunches, none the less say please?” Victor grinned teasingly. “The man that asked me to search Phil Rogers flat has nothing to with the Peacemaker. Honestly, it’s been months Sherlock and there’s been no activity linked to the Peacemaker in London.”

“That’s because he’s gone abroad! There’s been rumblings of him all over the world! It’s ridiculous,” Sherlock huffed.

“You’re just jealous,” Trevor rolled his eyes and Sherlock scowled at him. “Drop it Sherlock, I have nothing to do with this vigilante you’re obsessed with, alright?”

Sherlock continued to scowl, but followed Trevor down the street to the coffee shop that his friend/babysitter/new arch enemy had insisted that Sherlock try. Several months ago, after the incident with Huxley and the mugging, and Mycroft had put two and two together and hardened down his watch on Sherlock by hiring his old university friend to keep near constant tabs on him, Sherlock had tried ditching Victor. Victor, however, despite his general uselessness at pretty much everything else, was very good at finding Sherlock whenever he’d try to run off.

After finding out that apparently been Michael Huxley was in fact not some saint caught up with a gang, but rather someone who had stolen highly classified intelligence and had proceeded to go rogue. For some reason MI5 had not thought to inform the Met of this when they opened an investigation into Huxley. The flash drive he’d been carrying around was the intelligence in question, and Huxley had been hoarding it hoping it to use it in whatever scenario proved to be most to his advantage.

But rather than using his information for protection, Huxley had become paranoid. Huxley had turned to old habits in desperation for money, and had managed to horribly muck up a mugging, ultimately killing his victim. The victim, infuriatingly, was a man from somewhere Sherlock had deleted where in eastern Europe, and was in the UK on falsified papers and was rumored to be a trained assassin.

But somehow some unassuming hacker with a slightly rough background had managed to discharge his illegal firearm into said assassins head. Because that was definitely something that could happen coincidentally.

Huxley had adamantly denied that he was the one who had killed the assassin. He continued to claim that while he did in fact possess a weapon, the one that had been recovered in the abandoned flat he had been squatting in was not his. Sherlock had half the mind to believe him, but as far as what the evidence pointed to, manslaughter was added to Huxley’s apparently rather long list of charges.

The only thing Huxley did seem to be good for was that he was desperate enough to make a deal that would ensure he was not sent to the same prison as Phil Rogers, who he apparently did not leave on the best terms at their last meeting, he, in panicked desperation, named the crime fighting force that had been destroying Sherlock’s career.

Some bloke that was known only by the ridiculous name of The Peacemaker.

Before Sherlock or anyone else could question Huxley more on The Peacemaker, some men in dark suits had shown up with a file of paper work allowing them to take Huxley away, probably to some bunker somewhere for all Sherlock knew or cared.

Despite having confirmation of the existence of a vigilante that had been disassembling all of London’s criminal networks, and a name to match, Sherlock found it impossible to get any closer to assembling a full picture of what was going on. An entire team had been assembled down at the Yard as well on the mysterious man, but they had even less luck than Sherlock.

It had now been months since the existence of The Peacemaker was brought to Sherlock’s attention, and he knew nothing definitive about the man’s identity. He seemed to have gone abroad and an array of awe-inspiringly ‘coincidental’ arrests had been left in his wake as he circumnavigated the globe. But other than that, Sherlock knew nothing. The only thing he was convinced of, however, was that Victor Trevor knew more than he was letting on.

So Sherlock resigned himself to his babysitting and spent every free moment trying to unravel the mystery of Victor Trevor.

Sherlock pulled back out of his mind to realize that Victor had taken off at an alarmingly quick pace and was now a few meters ahead of him.

“Victor!” Sherlock cried out. Victor suddenly was caught up with another man, spinning the other man towards a wall, making it so Sherlock couldn’t see the other man's face. The other man made a gesture in the process as if to pull something from his side, but Sherlock couldn't see enough to see what that was. The whole affair looked as if it was made as part of a friendly greeting, but Sherlock couldn’t help but be suspicious that Victor was purposefully hiding the other man’s identity from Sherlock.

He paused on the sidewalk to observe the other man that was now speaking to Trevor. He could only see the man’s back from where he was standing, but the man was well dressed in comfortable but expensive looking boots, dark but well-fitting jeans, and a leather jacket that hugged around muscular shoulders and tapered over a compact back. He had blond hair that was slightly shaggy looking but not particularly long. It appeared to be kept in a style similar to Victor’s, but a bit less extreme to suit someone who was likely closer to middle aged than Victor was.

And then there was the way the man stood. Like military, but with something a bit off, evidence of a non-regulatory stiff swagger.

Sherlock felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He couldn’t bring himself to move, so instead he stood paralyzed on the sidewalk until Victor stopped talking to the other man, and the other man stepped around Victor and continued on his way.

“What do you want, Holmes?” Victor called out to Sherlock, but Sherlock stood frozen.

“Hey, mate, you alright?” Victor asked as he walked back towards Sherlock. “Hey, come on let’s go get some espresso in you, alright?” Victor suggested, and Sherlock found himself nudged into step by a brush of his forearm from Victors own.

“Who was that?” Sherlock finally brought himself to whisper.

“It was no one, just an old friend.”

“Related to the Peacemaker?” Sherlock asked before he could stop himself. The truth was, his brain seemed to be misfiring, and backtracking to the last train of thought pre-panic seemed to be the best option. It was far easier than considering the other train of thought that had brought his mind directly to a halt.

“Really, Holmes, I thought that you had some tact. Do you think that if I had anything to do with that guy, which I’ve told you I don’t, that I’d tell you now? After what, accidentally running into the Peacemaker himself in the streets?”

“Well, I don’t know, I just, I thought that there was something familiar about the way he stood,” _John, John, JOHNJOHNJOHN_ , his brained screamed the image of the back of familiar-but-not blond haired stranger burned into his mind.

“The way he stood?” Victor paused, looking at Sherlock earnestly.

“Yeah, kind of like J-,” Sherlock stopped. “Like a soldier.” Victor laid an arm on his shoulder and looked at him sympathetically. Sherlock and Victor had never formally spoken about John, but Sherlock had always worked with the assumption that somehow or another Victor knew, about all of it. How he knew Sherlock didn’t know, and couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“My friend has a background in military, that doesn’t mean he’s taking down some of the city’s best criminal’s right under your nose. And come on, ‘The Peacemaker’ hasn’t stolen any cases from you in months,” Victor said, his trademark grin returning, before he once again nudged Sherlock forwards again.

“But the only ones left are so boring,” Sherlock half-heartedly groaned. He looked over meekly at Victor just in time to catch the other man roll his eyes before dragging Sherlock into their destination for yet another cup of coffee Sherlock would let go cold.

 

* * *

 

“Victor, dear, there is someone here to see you. She seems quite desperate,” Mrs. Hudson announced, sticking her head through the door of Sherlock’s flat.

Victor sat up from where he had been stretched out along the sofa, and Sherlock observed the confused, worried, and slightly panicked look that crossed his face.

“Right, er, probably just some chick from a couple nights ago. Must have given her this address by mistake. I’ll go get rid of her,” Victor said nonchalantly sliding out of the flat behind Mrs. Hudson but Sherlock narrowed his gaze.

“That boy is really an enigma, isn’t he? Quite the lady killer!” Mrs. Hudson laughed before heading back down the stairs to her flat.

Enigma is certainly right, Sherlock thought as he carefully rose from his chair and crept out of the flat and down the stairs, careful to skip the ones that squeak. He heard a stream of hushed curses pour from Victor’s mouth. Pressing his back to the wall of the landing, Sherlock held his breath while he tried to eavesdrop.

“Vic, quiet. I know where he is, I was able to track them on CCTV feeds after I received the video,” a woman’s voice Sherlock didn’t recognize explained.

“Then why the fuck aren’t you already there rescuing him?” Victor hissed, a desperation and frustration licking at his voice that Sherlock had never heard from the other man.

“It’s Moriarty,” Sherlock felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs at the mention of the name. “He knows. He knows about everything, and he’s got him and he’s fucking going to kill him and I can’t risk a one man rescue mission. I need all the help I can get, Vic. If we lose him, then what was even the point?”

“The point would be that Moriarty has nothing left, Mar, you know that. He has nothing in the world right now but the very tool we built to destroy him.”

“He’s not a tool,” the woman, Mary perhaps, spat.

“Vic, our only objective was to keep them alive through this. That’s all it’s ever been. That’s the only game plan. Everything else that’s happened is just coincidence. I had no idea I’d spent a year parading around the globe like we did,” _The Peacemaker_ , Sherlock’s mind supplied, making the connection. “I don’t have time to argue about this anymore. I don’t doubt that this time Moriarty’s not going to have the same rules he did last time about permanent damage. Are you coming or not?”

There was only a moments silence before Victor spoke. “Course I’m coming. What about…?” there was silence and Sherlock could only assume some gesture was being made to fill the silence.

“We’ll deal with him when we need to, right now we need to go.”

There was a sound of the front door opening and closing again. Sherlock stood on the landing for a moment, his head spinning. Moriarty. Moriarty was back and he’d kidnapped someone. Someone important. The Peacemaker? Victor _was_ involved.

And without another second to sort out the details, Sherlock was flying down the last set of stairs and out of the building, hailing a cab and telling it to tail the car he had just caught Victor and a mysterious blonde woman slide into before the engine roared and pulled away from the curb.

They sped across London, Sherlock plying the cabbie into making increasingly daring choices in an effort to tail the other zippy little car with an endless stream of twenty pound notes carelessly shoved through the plastic screen that separated the driver from the back of the cab. The cabbie was hesitant but continued to oblige Sherlock’s demands as the bills continued to pile up. They drove east across London and Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat as he realized that they were headed in the direction of the West India Docks. It had been Canary Wharf where he’d gone looking for John all that time ago now, after all. And now Moriarty was leading Sherlock back through Tower Hamlets. They drove into an area that was populated by what appeared to be old factories. Usually these kinds of buildings now a day were remodeled into flats, but this string of buildings for whatever reason was eerily abandoned.

Eventually the car Victor was in slowed to a halt. Sherlock stuffed a few more twenty pound notes to the cabbie and got out of the car before it had even come to a complete halt. He looked ahead to see the blond woman who had been with Victor heading into a building. Sherlock quickly pursued.

He slid quietly into the building that the woman had gone into when suddenly someone grabbed him from behind. Sherlock immediately struggled, but stopped when a familiar voice spoke to him.

“I’m really sorry about this mate,” Victor’s voice whispered into his ear, before pressure of Victor’s arms around neck and to the back of his head sharply increased and the world went black. 


	9. The Tick

_Smile for the camera, Johnny._ The words echoed in John’s mind as he regained consciousness. They were followed by a panicked stream of one conscious thought of his ex-lovers name.

 _Sherlock SherlockSherlockSHERLOCK_.

His mind cleared further and he put the two thoughts together. Oh God, Sherlock must know. Moriarty had to have sent whatever video or photo he took of him to Sherlock. And now Sherlock knew. He knew John was alive. And that piece of information in Sherlock’s mind would inevitably mean that Sherlock would soon know everything else as well.

As John began to gather his faculties, he realized that this time he was seated, tied to a chair. He did another quick scan of his body, trying to push Sherlock out of his mind.  He tested what he could move and what he couldn’t, what hurt and what didn’t. He was bruised and bloodied, and taking deep breaths caused shooting pain, as did basically any other sort of movement he quickly realized. Thankfully though, there was nothing that seemed particularly life threatening at that moment. If he was jostled around too much, the likely broken rib, or more likely ribs, could possibly puncture his lung, which if without pretty immediate medical attention could become life threatening. But as long as he stayed still, bought his time to figure out a way out, or maybe to give enough time for the non guaranteed rescue enough time to show up, he still had strong chances of making it out alive.

After the assessment of his body, the situation at hand returned to his mind. Moriarty had inevitably sent whatever photo or video he took of John to someone, and the most logical assumption was that that person was Sherlock. He imagined Sherlock receiving proof of John’s brokenness. He imagined Sherlock’s face showing fragments of endless emotions: anguish, anger, betrayal, pain, bitterness, disappointment, rage.  Maybe rescue _would_ be sent. He imagined Sherlock clearing his expression, instantly resetting it to a blank slate. Could he really expect Sherlock to see through another instance of John’s betrayal to save him? It hadn’t happened the first time, there was no reason to expect any different now.

Before he could stop it, a dry, hollow, sob escaped his lips.

“Awake again, Johnny? You didn’t really think I was done with you yet, did you?” John heard Moriarty chide from somewhere in the distance and he snapped his focus back to the situation at hand. He looked up to see the other man a few meters in front of him sitting at a large wooden desk. He was reclining back in a swiveling desk chair and he had his feet propped up on the table. It looked like John was still in the same vast, high ceiling-ed room that he was before, but now he was turned the other direction, revealing what looked to be a makeshift laboratory and office. Metal folding tables were set up around the edges of the large room and were littered with stacks of books and paper, as well as a variety of equipment, some more sinister looking than others. Moriarty sat in the middle of it all, grinning at John with a look of confidence that was deeply disturbing to John. He looked like a king ruling over all of the laboratory supplies that surrounded him.

John said nothing in response to Moriarty, still determined that not engaging would be the best approach for the moment. His mind was too busy churning in panic. If Moriarty did send that video to Sherlock, maybe it was purposefully to lure him in. John drew a slow breath, trying to push that train of thought out of his mind. He couldn’t bare it if Moriarty got to Sherlock now.

“Well, I’m not, Johnny-boy. I still have some praises left to sing you, don’t I? I’m sorry about…that, by the way,” Moriarty gestured to John’s entire body, which probably looked a wreck. “I was just a bit, hm, overcome. That’s done now, though. What do you say, Johnny? Can we start again?”

John stared at the other man with a look of horror and confusion. He didn’t have any idea where the other man was going with this, but wherever it was, it couldn’t be good.

“Oh, darling,” John cringed at the endearment. Moriarty caught John’s discomforted expression and smiled brightly at him. He got up from his chair and made his way around the table and over to John. “You didn’t think when I said all of that stuff about tearing you down and climbing atop the pieces I meant physically?” Moriarty asked, contradicting his words as he straddled himself over John, sitting down atop his lap. His fingers went to John’s jaw, stroking over his beard. John flinched away from the touch, but immediately gasped at the resulting sharp pain in his chest, and stilled himself despite Moriarty's ministrations.

“No Johnny that would be the worst thing I could do. I could, of course, if I wanted to. Of course I could. I could grind you into the ground with the heel of my shoe. But that wouldn’t mean anything anymore, would it? You’re already dead, after all, and now you’ve dragged me down with you. Maybe I could rebuild on my own, but it would take ages. You left quite the impression. Even if I dragged around your corpse with me to business meetings, I don’t think I’d ever be able to convince anyone the Peacemaker is gone, would I?” Moriarty was now leaning down close to John almost nuzzling his neck, so close that John could feel his breath on his neck and his lips ghosting against his earlobe. John let out another involuntary gasp. Moriarty hummed into his ear while simultaneously grinding his arse against John’s lap. John thrust against his restraints in panic, ignoring the stabs of pain throughout his body that resulted in the protest.

“Sh,” Moriarty cooed, leaning away from John to reveal another twisted, knowing grin. “Don’t worry, darling. I don’t have anything untoward planned for you. You aren’t exactly my type, Johnny. No offense, mind. No one is really, are they? I’d thought for a second your beloved Sherlock might be, but watching him now, he’s far more normal than I initially was lead to believe. I think the problem is I wouldn’t really want anything less than an equal, but at the same time I can’t bear the thought of competition." Ah well," he sighed heavily. 

Fingers continued to trace up and down John’s jaw, but John hardly noticed anymore as his mind span trying to make sense of what Moriarty was telling him.

Did that mean that Moriarty didn’t even view Sherlock as an enemy anymore? Perhaps he didn’t send the video to Sherlock to lure him in, but rather just to break John? But that couldn’t be right, Sherlock was still a genius. He was still at the end of the day Moriarty’s biggest threat. John had only ever just been a primer. It was always Sherlock’s job to destroy Moriarty. John wasn’t suited for the job he'd become the muscle, more than he ever should have been able to, but Sherlock was the brains.

“You’re just so fun to play with though, aren’t you Johnny? And quite likeable. I’d be a fool to claim I didn’t understand what everyone else sees in you. You’re adorable, aren't you? Sherlock’s adorable little pet blogger, was it? But you’re my pet now, aren’t you? I do love my pets. I like to take care of them, make them feel special, don’t I? Though I certainly don’t go as far as… bestiality,” Moriarty chuckled, again seeming to contradict his statement by grinding himself against John again. “Don’t I Sebby?” John heard a grunt from across the room, confirming Moran’s presence. “Moran's a bit different than you though. I've never played with him like this, wouldn't be any fun," he smirked at John before quickly lightening his tone. "Sebby, could you pull that table over there to us? I’ve just gotten comfortable and I’d hate to move.”

John’s eyes followed Moran as he came into his line of vision. He followed Moriarty’s finger to the small rolling table that he pointed to, which had a small metal tray on it which had some unidentifiable objects resting on it. John fought down the panic that instantly welled up inside of him. It was all too familiar, little metal tray, the kind that held scalpels and other medical tools. Medical tools he'd used to maim, to butcher. All this time, and John was still faced with a reminder that he would never be able to be a doctor again. He gasped sharply as he began to panic and cringed in agony. He tried to catch his breath, but couldn’t figure out how to without the pain.

“Shhhh, Johnny,” came a calm whisper. A hand pressed gently against his chest while another cupped the back of his neck. “Look at me, darling, look at me.” John did, looking into Moriarty’s brown eyes. He was horrified to find that the world seemed to still for a minute, giving John a chance to regulate his breathing and come back to the present.

“Good boy, Johnny,” Moriarty praised. A fire quickly rose back up within John and he growled.

Moran had pushed the table into Moriarty’s reach, and then quickly went to stand somewhere behind John again. Moriarty reached out to the table and picked up what turned out to not be a scalpel, but rather a shaving brush and a dish of shaving cream. He began to lather it over John’s face. The sensation of it in another scenario may have been soothing, but John found himself over sensitized after his panic attack and brush tickling along his jaw felt more unbearable that the pain in his chest.

“I really am sorry about all this damage I’ve done to you. I’d like to clean you up now though,” Moriarty began to speak again and the voice was grating on John’s ears. He wanted to shove the man away from him and curl into a ball with his eyes tightly shut and his hands over his ears.

“I want to get you back to looking like your old self. John Watson was always a pretty impressive man wasn’t he? All this Peacemaker garbage isn’t some alter ego you developed, is it? No, that man has always lived inside you, didn’t he? But you hid him. Hid him because you doubted yourself, was afraid of your own power. And then Sherlock helped you get over those doubts, didn’t he? But you still had to restrain yourself around him. You were too afraid of scaring Sherlock off, was that what you told yourself?” John did not acknowledge Moriarty’s line of questioning and instead took slow, shallow breaths through his nose. “But what you were really afraid of was that you would outshine him, wasn't it? You were worried that if Sherlock knew all that you are, he wouldn't want you anymore. You were afraid that everyone would think you’re too crazy, right? Everyone always worries that if they’re themselves, their true selves, that everyone else will think they’re crazy. What would the world be like, though, if everyone stopped worrying about being crazy? You stopped worrying and brought the world to its knees.”

The brush continued to dance along John’s jaw, occasionally dabbing at it to accentuate some of Moriarty’s words.

“But then maybe you’re a special case.”

Moriarty reached back to the tray and picked up a straight razor. He held it up for John to see and it glimmered in the late afternoon light that poured through the large windows. _It’s just a razor_ , John told himself, trying to keep himself from panicking while Moriarty set to work, carefully running the blade along the base of John’s jaw, stopping to wipe the blade on a towel before repeating the motion.

“Ah, there it is,” Moriarty murmured once the left side of John’s jaw was uncovered revealing the long scar, now surely glaring red and inflamed. Moriarty continued, making quick work of the other half of John’s face, removing what had taken months to grow in under a half an hour.

Moriarty set down the razor and the towel and took up a bottle, pouring a liquid into his palms and warming it between his hands. He then brought his hands to John’s cheeks with a slap. John hissed at the sting of the aftershave. The cold burn seeping into his pores, however, seemed to reset something within John’s mind. It was like he’d been drenched in ice water, and had now snapped out of it.

“Fuck, Mori--,” John began, finally finding it within himself to protest, but Moriarty cut him off.

“Call me Jim, James if you prefer,” Moriarty corrected. “Too many syllables in my surname, don’t you think? Sounds intimidating, but too rough in the mouth for friends. And we’re going to be great friends now, aren’t we, my dear Johnny?”

John could only stare at Moriarty in horror. What was the madman going on about?

“We could never be _friends_ ,” John spat reverently.

Moriarty looked like John had slapped him, once again rearing back from John, but he quickly regained his composure.

“But we work so well together, don’t you think?” Moriarty said, slowly bringing his hands back to John’s head and twining his fingers through his hair. “You get along with Seb, you’re excellent at following orders, you have a taste for violence—,” John grimaced. “Oh, don’t make those faces, darling. You know you do. You can tell yourself that you’re tired of it all now, but we both know that that isn’t true. Maybe I won’t be able to ask you to cut anyone up for me, but you’d do wonderfully at nearly anything else I may require. You’ll rest up a bit and then be bored out of your mind again. You’ll need some _action_. At least when Sherlock gets bored and wants to die, he does it slowly, doesn’t he, with the drugs? When you get bored and want to die though, you’ll fire a bullet into your head. Doesn’t give anyone much time to save you does it? And so many people want to save you, don’t they? Your friend at the Yard, both the Holmes boys, your two new crime fighting pals, they all would happily throw themselves in front of a train to save you. Couldn’t you let me save you Johnny, instead? Save them from making any unnecessary sacrifices.”

John couldn’t help but bark out a laugh. The notion was preposterous. Moriarty had lost it, hadn’t he? He must have, what else could he be playing at? Moriarty kept talking as John tried to wrap his head around what was going on. He wasn’t dumb. Despite the multiple times he's been knocked unconscious in the past year, he didn't have any major brain damage. He knew now that making deals with madmen about exchanges of sacrifices didn’t turn out very well for anyone, particularly himself.

“I’d never let you get bored again, darling. I’m like Sherlock, but better. None of that silly human stuff to mess everything up, right? You don’t think you can ever go back to the way things were with him, even if you walked out of here and I fired a bullet into Seb’s and then my own brain and ended it all. Because you _loved_ him and then _betrayed_ him and that _changes_ things. But ugh, how boring is that? But we could rule the world couldn’t we, forever, no matter what.”

Moriarty had gone back to stroking John’s jaw and John continued to try and figure out what the fuck was going on. But he couldn’t. In fact the worst part was that what Moriarty was saying in a way made sense, in a twisted way. Putting aside the very obvious fact that his and Moriarty’s moralities obvious did not match up, it was a decent proposal for a future for John when he otherwise couldn’t imagine one.

John rather fire a bullet into his brain than spend the rest of his life working for Moriarty.

But not knowing what else to do, in a rash spur of the moment decision at a time when all proper strategy seemed useless, John played along.

“But—,” John started trying to sound conflicted and a bit meek, which wasn’t exactly hard. “But what about Sherlock?”

Moriarty groaned, “I don’t care about Sherlock anymore. He's so. Boring. With you and Seb by my side he’d hardly be a threat, would he? No, when you left, he broke. That friend of yours, Trevor, he’s done a decent job replacing you for now, but he’s not exactly really Sherlock’s friend. He care’s because he’s paid to, it’s just another job to him. Sherlock’s adoring brother dearest might be able to keep him around for a while, but not forever. He’ll get bored, as well, playing babysitter. And he’ll leave and how long will Sherlock last after that? We could place bets, if you like.”

John slowly shook his head, his brow carefully furrowed.

“I just don’t understand,” John murmured. “I can’t, I don’t kill people.”

Moriarty laughed.

“Oh, but you do, Johnny. I know you’ve been letting that girl of yours rack up the real body count, but you’ve got one of your own on your little world tour.”

John cringed. That was the part he’d refused to think about, wanting to block it out. He was a doctor, had been a doctor, but either way he was supposed to save people whenever he could. He could not hold a knife to another person’s body again without vomiting, but still that saving people instinct was there. But sometimes, things had happened. It was only ever in self-defense, when things had gone horribly wrong. He was hardly an assassin or executioner, but still it had been--

“Eleven people, Johnny. Now, over the course of a career that hardly compares to someone like Seb, but how many people have you killed in the past year, Sebby?”

“Business has been a little... slow. Hardly any at all. Seven, maybe eight,” Moran answered gruffly.

"You've got him beat, and you've only been at it a few months," Moriarty confirmed.

The room fell silent for a moment, and John was certainly relieved to be able to have a brief break from the cracked man’s rambling questions. After a few more moments, much to John’s relief, Moriarty stood up from John’s lap and walked back over to the desk in the center of the room. He stood with his back to John as he rummaged around the table. John grew nervous with the curiosity of what he could be looking for, but was fairly certain that he was also not going to suddenly pull a gun out, turn around, and shoot him execution style. And as long as his life was not immediately threatened, John could work with the rest.

When Moriarty did turn around, he was holding a phone.

“Going to send Sherlock more messages? I thought you told me you were done with him?” John asked, feeling the need to break the silence as it finally becoming less relaxing and more jarring.

Moriarty looked up from the phone to John, his brow momentarily furrowing, and then another Cheshire cat grin slowly spreading across his face.

“You thought I sent that little gift I took of you to Sherlock?” he asked. “Oh Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Has that what you’ve been thinking this whole time, my darling? No wonder you seem so stressed, worried about me hurting your precious little Sherly. No, Johnny. I told you that I’m done with him, didn’t I? And I’d never lie to you. Never ever ever. How can we work together if you can’t trust me?”

“I—I—,” John sputtered, but couldn’t finish the thought. _Sherlock isn’t on his way_ , was the first thought that claimed John’s mind, and a wave of defeat that he hadn’t been expecting washed over him. _Sherlock doesn’t know_ , came next, and the thought brought a wave of hope that John also hadn’t anticipated. _But then who else is there?_ The final thought echoed in John’s mind. It was quickly answered when Moriarty walked back towards him and held the phone screen before him.

It was what he assumed was a CCTV feed, showing a black car pulling up to the curb in a part of town John couldn’t identify, but imagined was wherever he was right now. The car came to a stop, and a man and a woman stepped out. Victor and Mary. John wondered if he should give up on breathing all together as once again it felt like the air was sucked out of him.

“No, I sent it to that little assassin friend of yours, Johnny. The cute little blonde thing with a gun, surely you haven't forgotten? You two make a beautiful pair, I haven’t told you before. It’s like you two could be twins, both… compact and unassuming. Cute in kind of a plain way, but ready to destroy the world for the sake of it.” Moriarty’s hand had returned to stroking John’s hair, and John forced himself to lean into the touch in a way that he hoped came off as unconscious, although the way he was grinding down defensively in his jaw told another story.

“We were never trying to destroy the world,” John murmured.

Moriarty hummed.

“No, you were just trying to destroy mine.”

The statement hung in the air, lacking all the bile and aggression of the previous times he had made similar statements earlier that day. He almost sounded sad, John would go as far as to say heartbroken even, although John wasn’t convinced Moriarty had a heart to break. But then could he be like Sherlock after all? Not in the sense that he was a genius or a mastermind or a self-proclaimed sociopath. But maybe in the sense that he was just a man as well, who when it came down to it felt so much that it overwhelmed him. He had, just like Sherlock, lived a life of carefully orchestrated control, and now the control was gone. When Sherlock lost control, he fought to regain it through self-destructive behavior. 

Moriarty was scrambling to regain control after very possibly for the first time experiencing a loss of it. In times like these, Sherlock turned to crack, but Moriarty simply had cracked.

And with the realization, John knew he had won. He wasn’t sure if Victor, Mary and himself would get out alive, but Sherlock would, and that had always been the main objective. Moriarty was defeated. Whether or not, or in what fashion, the former mastermind's body would be dragged into the morgue or prison was only a technicality.

“But I said I had to destroy yours,” John heard the other man whisper.

John’s eyes darted to Moriarty’s.

“You’re going to do it for me.”

“What?” John gasped.

“Your world isn’t Sherlock, Johnny. Not anymore anyway. Your world is _them,”_ Moriarty gestured to the phone that held the CCTV feeds tracking Mary and Victor. “You’re going to destroy them.”

Moriarty stuffed the phone into his pocket and exchanged it for something else that he grabbed out of the back of his trousers. The familiar weight and metallic chill of a handgun pressed against his lap. Moriarty leaned close to him, lips to his ear.

“You’re going to kill them, Johnny. If you don’t, Seb will kill all of you. But I hope that you choose to save yourself and join me.”

And then there was crashing noise, like a door being flung open.

“Step away from him,” Victor’s voice rang out in through the empty space of the large room.

“Oh, Victor, long time no see, isn’t it?” Moriarty said calmly. He was no longer looking down at John, but rather behind him, staring off into the distance at the people that John could not see for himself. There was silence in response.

“You think I don’t remember you? The only reason I hired you was because of your connection to Sherlock, obviously. I thought you might be useful at some point, but then you scurried off and I had better things to do than track you down. But this game of mine, with him, has been going on for ages. But my how things have changed now, haven’t they?”

John could only see Moriarty, and he had to tilt his head upwards to peer up at the man who was now towering above him, confronting Mary and Victor who stood at the door behind him, out of his sight.

“Step away from John,” Victor commanded.

John wasn’t sure if he had the authority to make such claims or if he was grasping at straws. He assumed Mary and Victor were both armed, and Moran was probably still around somewhere. Moriarty had left his gun in John’s lap, instead of drawing it.

“I’ll do you one better,” Moriarty said calmly before he bent down and began to untie John, kneeling to undo his ankles first before reaching around him to untie his hands which were tied behind the chair back. “Remember what I said,” he whispered into John’s ear before John’s hands fell free.

For a second, they both stood still. Moriarty stood before him, looking irritatingly relaxed.

“Well, I see my work here is done, if you don’t mind?” he said suddenly, before slowly backing away from John and then turning to casually waltz across the room to another door at the end of the room.

John held his breath while he walked away, wondering if Mary or Victor behind his would take action to stop the man from leaving. But they were people of orders, maybe not ex-military like John, but disciplined just the same or actually even more. And to kill Moriarty if given the chance was never one of their orders. After Moriarty had slid out the door and it shut firmly behind, John still sat still in his chair, and everyone else stayed still with him. He wondered how long he could sit like this before someone else would make a move. How long could he hold command over  the room? If he just sat here, would the world stay still for him?

God, he was so tired, wasn’t he? He’d almost forgotten how tired he was.

After a few more slow minutes, he finally slowly stood up. His whole body ached in protest. He carefully fingered the gun in his lap, shifting it carefully into the waistband of his trousers. Then he slowly made to turn around, but the twisting movement required of his torso was too much, and something inside him stabbed something else. He gasped and fought against collapsing, but struggled to maintain his footing. He began to fall forwards when arms wrapped around him and pulled him back to his feet.

“I’ve got you there, big man,” Victor said reassuringly. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

John said nothing in response. Instead, he quickly twisted Victor around so that he was gripping the man in front of him, shielding himself behind the other man’s body and holding the gun he'd pulled from his waistband to his friends head.

Then world seemed to still for a second as John realized he couldn’t breathe. One of the broken ribs must have punctured his lung, collapsing it.

And then he saw Sherlock, laying sprawled out on the couch of 221B, hands steepled under his chin, looking like the world was beneath him.

 _Breathing is boring_.

So John stopped.

“I’m supposed to kill you,” John tried to keep his voice steady, to varying degrees of success.

“Are you going to?” Victor murmured.

John didn’t respond for a moment, peering over Victor’s shoulder to make eye contact with Mary. Victor already knew the answer, anyway, he’d practically let John tackle him. John was so physically compromised that all it would take was a thrust backwards from Victor to send John to the floor at the moment.

He saw that Mary had a little red dot on her forehead. He followed angle of laser beam to find Moran hunched up in the rafters with a sniper rifle. How and when he’d gotten up there, John wasn’t sure. Mary, however, had her own weapon pointed in John’s direction, currently at Victor who was nearly completely blocking John’s smaller frame. She was staring back at him, her expression patient. She was waiting.

John fired his gun, quickly tilting the barrel so that instead of firing into Victors head it fired backwards into John’s forearm. He tried to ignore the instant searing feeling that consumed his flesh, but the involuntary breath he took to try and regulate the pain reminded him that he didn't really have the ability to breathe. Before he could think a second more, he slammed the side of his gun into Victor’s head hard enough to leave a wound that would bleed enough if from a distance would look like a bullet wound and Victor collapsed to the floor.

Hopefully Moran was too focused on Mary to catch the deception. Hopefully wherever Moriarty was watching from it was far enough away, on a grainy or lagging feed, that wouldn’t allow him to notice it either.

John quickly moved to point his weapon at Mary, fighting every distress signal his body was sending to steadily aim the gun at Mary’s head, Mary pointed her weapon right back at him. Moran could easily take her out, he could have any time, but Moriarty had told John to kill them. Moran was only still there as insurance, in case John betrayed him.

A fog began to cloud in his mind, but John tried to ignore it as he willed himself to take slow steps forwards. He was careful to keep his bleeding shoulder angled away from Moran, just in case the man dared to make a glance away from his current target and to check on John.

“John, what are you doing?” Mary asked. She sounded panicked, but John knew it wasn’t because she feared for his life. Rather, she feared for his. _Oh, Mary._

He took slow steps. He wasn’t quite sure what he was planning to do when he reached Mary, but he didn’t have to find out because the next thing he remembered there was a loud thud a few feet away from him and he realized that he himself was already lying on the floor. A few moments later, maybe more if he’d lost consciousness again and hadn’t realized, Victor was learning over him, applying pressure to the bullet wound in his arm.

“Vic,” John muttered, trying to look around him. His head flopped to the side and saw Mary leaning over a body, fingers checking for a pulse. Whose body was it again? John couldn’t remember. What was going on? Everything seemed too heavy, his vision seemed to be fading. He looked back up to the man kneeling over him.

“It’s okay John, it’s over now. Help is on the way John. Stay with me, John. Stay with me. John.”

The voice continued to call his name. It sounded near and far, loud and quiet, all at once.

God, he was so tired.

He closed his eyes.


	10. The Gears

Sherlock took his bearings as consciousness came back to him. He appeared to be leaned up against a box in some sort of storage room.

His head ached something awful and he let out a groan. He tried to sit up straighter as he looked around the room. His movements were clumsy, and his body felt like jello. 

He was probably still in the old warehouse he had followed Victor and the woman to. 

Victor! Sherlock remembered. He had known Victor had had something to do with the Peacemaker and Moriarty. He had known it all along. 

His moment of victory though was cut short as his eyes scanned the room and he caught sight of a man standing across the room, leaning casually against a stack of boxes.

He gasped. 

“Long time no see, Sherlock,” Moriarty said casually. He didn't move from his spot against the boxes. Didn't come closer to Sherlock, didn't make any gestures. He just stood there like a statue. 

“What—” Sherlock started but didn’t finish.

“We’ve both been recast, haven’t we? Left to hide out backstage while the principle actors take the stage. To think we'd thought of him as nothing more than an understudy.”

Sherlock watched Moriarty in horror, trying to deduce the man, make sense of what he was saying. The more he looked at the criminal mastermind, though, the more he realized that something was entirely off about him. Far much more so than the last time they had met.

“You still really don’t have a clue about any of it, do you?” Moriarty said, sounding exasperated. “God you’ve become so dim.”

“I’m not--,” Sherlock started, but was once again cut off.

“Yes you are, Sherlock. Would you like me to catch you up? I have a wonderful story to tell you. It’s got a lot of twists and turns!”

Finally Moriarty moved, going over to look out a window. The glass was dirty and warped, impenetrable with the eye, but yet Moriarty stared, enraptured. 

Sherlock remained quiet, as it seemed like the best thing to do, while Moriarty began to tell his tale, like he was telling a story to a child. 

“Once upon a time there was a man who wasn’t quite like everyone else. He had dreams bigger than everyone else seemed to be able to fathom. Life was easy for him, though, despite having to exist in a world of imbeciles, because it turns out, the idiotic masses are quite easy to control. And there was nothing the man loved more than control.

“One day, he heard tales of another man, a man who was like him in his genius, but used his powers for good instead of evil,” Moriarty paused, as if contemplating something, “Good and evil are of course complicated and relative concepts, but I’m sticking with the archetypes," Moriarty said as an aside. Then he continued: “And so, thinking he had finally found an opponent worth engaging with, he began to challenge him. And this new opponent rose so wonderfully to the challenge. They fought, and it was like a dance. A splendid dance.

“But the opponent had a partner, a friend of sorts, that seemed to be in the way. The man wanted the opponent all to himself, to toy with and crush. But this friend distracted the opponent. Made him _too_ good. So the man decided to use friend to his advantage. He kidnapped him and gave him a mission. He turned this friend into a butcher of sorts, or maybe a tailor, and it was marvelous. The work he did, the trouble he caused. All while the opponent knew nothing about the betrayal of his friend. But soon enough, the friend stopped being of use to the man. But of course, you already know this part. You know what the friend did, you know that when he ran out of usefulness the man drowned him in a river. Or tried to anyway.” Moriarty paused, waiting for Sherlock to process the news.

And process the news he did. Sherlock’s mind began to scramble.

“This is the part that you don’t know, Sherlock. This is the part of the story that you were left out of,” Moriarty explained. “But don’t feel too bad Sherlock. I didn’t know either, not until a couple months ago.”

“John’s not dead,” Sherlock whispered.

Moriarty all but ignored him.

“Apparently, the opponents friend was smarter, stronger, better than either the man or the opponent had realized. He rose from the dead, and launched a counter attack on the man, all while keeping his friend in the dark.

“He had help, of course. Two long time spies, hired by a mysterious entity, one of whom had even once been a friend of the opponents.”

Sherlock was only half listening. He knew that this information must be important, so he wasn’t completely shutting the information out. But most of his mind was reeling.

John’sNotDead John’sNotDead JOHN’SNOTDEAD!

He’d realized he’d begun to lose some of Moriarty’s revelations in his panic and excitement? relief? he wasn’t sure. But he needed to keep listening to Moriarty, he needed to know what happened to John.

“The friend turned into a sort of vigilante, and his only goal was to bring down the man. It was an impressive feat, to say the least. Traveling the world, striking fear into the hearts of some of the worst criminals, even racking up a body count. He tore down everything the man had built up, and there was nothing the man could do about it.

“The friend even acquired a bit of a nickname, you know. He was so shrouded in anonymity, people had to invent a new name for him. Do you know what they called him?” Moriarty asked.

Sherlock’s world shattered into a million tiny pieces. It was like he’d been slapped in the face. By a steam roller.

“The Peacemaker,” Sherlock whispered.

A twisted smile contorted Moriarty’s face and somewhere in the distance, a gunshot rang out.

“Oh dear, that’s my queue,” Moriarty said, suddenly moving away from Sherlock, making his way towards the door. “I’ve got knew plans, Sherlock, plans that are far bigger than you.”

And with that he slid out the door.

Sherlock remained seated on the floor. He thought he may have gone into shock, or something. None of his limbs would move.

John had been attacking Moriarty’s network.

John was the Peacemaker.

John was alive. 

Another gunshot.

Sherlock managed to surge himself to his feet, and was out the door after Moriarty. 

When he got outside he found himself in a dimly lit hall way. He heard the sounds of sirens in the distance.

And then, as if an apparition, Mycroft appeared at the end of the hallway. 

"Mycroft? What on earth are you doing here?" Sherlock sputtered.

"I've been... monitoring," Mycroft said slowly as he approached Sherlock.

Sherlock absorbed the information, and it easily slid in. Things were becoming clearer and clearer with every passing moment.

"Oh for fucks sake, you're the "mysterious figure," aren't you?"

Surprise crossed Mycroft's face, but it quickly it was wiped blank again.

"I'm glad to see that you're processing all of this so quickly, brother mine."

"You knew John was alive. You knew what he'd been doing," Sherlock said softly, his tone a bit murderous.

"It was a greater good kind of scenario, surely you understand," Mycroft sighed.

"Where is he?"

"John?" Who else would he be talking about? "He's nearby." 

Sherlock took off running, but was quickly caught in his brothers arms.

"It would do no one any good for you to find him right now. He's not the same as he was the last time you saw him all those months ago. And he's a bit indisposed at the moment."

"You do not get to tell me what to do."

"Yes, Sherlock, I do. John has been through hell these past few months. The world he's been living in is not one that you could imagine, nor one do I believe you'd have been able to handle had your places been swapped. He needs rest. He needs time to process things, and decide what his life will be like now that Moriarty is gone."

"What do you mean, now that Moriarty is gone? I just saw him."

"Moriarty, the man, is more or less a figure head. He could, I suppose, still close significant damage even as an individual. But all his resources are gone. Everything that made his such a threat to us he no longer had access to. We'll be able to track him down soon enough, just to tie up loose ends."

Sherlock's mind worked madly to make sense of everything. A whirlwind of information flying around in his mind, and Sherlock was working madly to file it all away into the appropriate rooms. But it was coming together somehow. amidst the chaos.

"John thinks I hate him, doesn't he?" was the first piece of clear deduction that came to him. 

A look of surprise again from Mycroft, but once again it quickly passed. "I'm not a psychologist, but I do believe that John doesn't anticipate there being a reality in which you want a future with him."

"Well then I must tell him!"

"Sherlock, after everything that has happened. All of the deceit, the betrayal, you still want him?"

"Of course I do!" Sherlock burst out. Then he stilled, and much more quietly said, "It wasn't his fault."

"John Watson was an accessory to murder. In the few months alone he has killed eleven people and injured dozens more. Several people, including the man that Michael Huxley was put away for killing, killed themselves rather than be brought down by him. None of this was his fault?"

Sherlock balled his hands into fists. 

"I'm not saying he did not have control over his actions! He didn't have a choice! Don't you understand? He didn't ever feel like he had a choice!" Sherlock yelled, voice strangled in passion and anguish."

Mycroft opened his mouth to speak, but Sherlock cut him off. He was pacing now, back and forth, one foot stamping down in front of the other.

"What is the point of your presence here? Do you want me to hate him? Or are you trying to tell me that despite the fact that he was working for you, you're going to arrest him for murder? As if he hasn't suffered enough!" 

When Sherlock finally finished, he was panting.

"No, nothing like that. I was just... collecting evidence."

"Evidence?"

"Yes, Sherlock."

Everything, then, in Sherlock's mind settled into place.

"You think John might try to kill himself, now that he's done with his mission."

"I worry that he poses a threat to himself if he believes his life no longer had purpose."

"Why can't I tell him myself."

Mycroft was silent.

"He won't even agree to see me."

"I think it's time you go home Sherlock. Get some rest. Heaven's knows the last time you slept. I'll let you know when we've made progress. John is going to need some time to recover."

"You don't mean just mentally," Sherlock asked suddenly as the realization came to him.

"I believe it's better if right now you don't know the specifics."

"So you expect me to just sit around the flat and wait, while John is potentially fighting for his life?"

Mycroft remained quiet. He reached out a hand and placed it on Sherlock's forearm. Something overcame his face that Sherlock had never seen before. If Sherlock had to call it something, he would have called it earnestness.

"I'll make sure he comes home to you."

And with that he turned around and began walking back down the hall. Sherlock waited a moment, feeling a bit dumbstruck, but once his brother disappeared from sight, Sherlock found himself walking slowly in the same direction. 

He realized the sirens were gone. Everything was quiet. John had probably been taken away, was on his way to some hospital somewhere.

He could, perhaps, track down every hospital in the city, hunting for him. Mycroft probably had him under excellent security, and realistically would be watching Sherlock as well. But if he wanted to, Sherlock knew he could find him.

But much to his annoyance, Sherlock realized he felt very tired. And helpless. And a bit nauseated. But there was also a feeling in his chest. It felt like the feeling of coming home after a long trip. 

John was coming home to him.

And so, he went to go wait for him.

* * *

 

Days went by, and nothing happened.

Ms. Hudson made him three meals a day, and lots of tea. Sherlock ate some of it, but most of it went cold.

Every time his phone chirped or the doorbell rang, Sherlock's heart leaped. 

But doorbells were rung by delivery men. Phone's rang from telemarketers. 

On the second day, Lestrade came by to take a statement, but refused to tell Sherlock anything else about anything. He claimed he didn't know anything, but Sherlock doubted that.

On the third day Molly texted him, asking him if he was alright, that Lestrade had come to the morgue and told her some troubling things.

Sherlock told her he was fine. 

The next day she showed up with biscuits. 

She, Ms. Hudson, and himself sat on the couch and watched crap telly while they ate them. 

On the fifth day, the doorbell rang once again. The voice at the bottom of the stairs talking to Ms. Hudson sounded vaguely male, but otherwise he could not make out who it might of belonged to. Footsteps ascended the stairs and Sherlock gripped the arms of his chair so tightly his knuckles went white.

The door to the flat was opened, and in walked Victor Trevor.

Sherlock deflated.

"Give it time Sherlock. We're doing all we can to get him here." Victor said softly, clearly reading Sherlock with ease. 

Sherlock said nothing. Victor walked over to take a seat on the couch, making sure to leave John's chair empty.

"He's healed well. The broken bones have been set. The gunshot wounds been stitched up."

"Gunshot wound?" Sherlock couldn't help but squawk. 

"Damn it Mycroft," Victor muttered. "He really didn't tell you anything."

"I'm losing my patience, Trevor." Sherlock growled. 

"He shot himself."

Sherlock was up out of his seat.

"He's tried to kill himself and no one could even be arsed to send me a text?"

Victor rose to match him.

"Shh, Sherlock. Calm down. This was days ago, back at the warehouse. He shot himself to protect us. He was trying to make it look like he'd shot me. He's doing fine, mentally."

Sherlock collapsed back into his seat. 

"The situation is delicate. I assume you have trusted us on that, because if you didn't I have no doubt in my mind you would have already tracked down John on your own," he smiled fondly, which was inexplicable to Sherlock. "But he's doing well. He's already up and walking, albeit very stiffly and slowly. Give it a couple more days Sherlock."

Victor's phone vibrated.

"Well, I've got to run. I'll see you again sometime, I hope." 

And with that he was out the door.

On the sixth day Sherlock slept.

On the seventh day he began to get antsy.

He was getting so bored waiting around like this. At first he was so exhausted, so relieved and anxious all at once, it had numbed him.

But now, now he needed to do something.

But he couldn't leave the flat in case John showed up. 

He couldn't take a case, if there were even any to take, because he couldn't risk some stranger being here when John came back. 

He couldn't risk looking like he had just moved on with his life.

All he had to do was sit here. Reorganize his mind palace. Reorganize his book shelf. 

He started tidying up the flat, for John. 

He made sure any old experiments we're stashed in any odd places. Made sure there was nothing on the floor that John might trip over. He even dusted, swept, and vacuumed

Ms. Hudson heard the vacuum running she came running up the stairs like Sherlock was using it to strangle himself.

"Sherlock what on earth are you doing!" She yelled.

"What does it look like I'm doing, I'm tidying up!"

"Oh my heavens!" she'd proclaimed and ran back down the stairs. She returned a moment later with a camera. 

On the eighth day something inside of him snapped, and he started to get an itch. 

It was like the need to drugs, but it wasn't. 

He felt like he was going through withdrawal. He spent the day lying on the sofa, groaning in agony or frustration, he didn't know. But he needed something.

On the ninth day, he paced. Paced back and forth through the apartment all day. 

On the tenth day, Molly showed up again, perhaps at Ms. Hudson's urging and they spent the day playing all sort of games and puzzles, anything to "take his mind off of things," as Molly said. 

He was rather cruel to her though, out of frustration over the stupid games, over Molly's poor strategy, over his impatience in general. 

After dealing with his foul mood for most of the day, she finally went home, and he was alone again. 

On the eleventh day, he just sat there. He sat there using every bit of energy just to keep himself in his seat. He needed something. He needed to do something. He couldn't wait any longer. But he couldn't leave. He had to wait.

At midnight, he couldn't take it anymore.

John wasn't going to come around in the middle of the night, and Sherlock had to get out of the god forsaken flat. 

He put on his shoes and grabbed his coat and made his way down the stairs. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him, not even caring if he woke Ms. Hudson. 

He turned right and immediately smacked into something or someone.

"Oi! Watch where you're going!" the person, the man, that he had run into shouted. But Sherlock was frozen at the familiarity of the voice.

The man that he had run into stepped back and let out a small gasp.

Before Sherlock stood none other than John Watson.

Silence fell between them as they stared at each other.

Sherlock noted how different John looked, while still all the same.

His face was scruffy, like he hadn't shaved in a week but hadn't had the time to grow out a beard. His skin was a bit tanner than usual. He was wearing jeans and a loose fitting t-shirt. A thousand little things were different about him, but he was still John.

His John. 

After a few more moments, John broke the silence.

"Oh, Sherlock, what are you, er, doing out so late?" he said awkwardly. 

All Sherlock could think was that he had waited so long he couldn't wait any longer. He couldn't go through awkward small talk, of getting to re-know each other, of processing things. He needed John in the way he used to need cocaine. He needed John injected into him, fogging his mind. 

All at once his restraint collapsed. Any thoughts he may have had about how seeing John for the first time would go flew out the window, as he stepped forward and grabbed John's face, and pulled him into a kiss. 

John, for a second seemed unsure, but after a moment he opened up, letting out a sob like whine. 

Sherlock pulled away.

"Please. Come inside," he begged.

John nodded and together they turned around and went back into 221 Baker Street. 

Up the stairs they went. At first in silence, but then John began to speak.

"I hadn't meant to see you tonight," he admitted. "I couldn't stand being in the hospital anymore. I was just taking a walk, and I guess I ended up here."

"John," Sherlock started, but the paused, considering his words. "I need you," he finally decided on.

"Mycroft showed me a tape, of when you came to the warehouse that day."

"I figured he would do something like that."

"I don't understand how you could forgive me," John said, looking at Sherlock pleadingly. 

"John," Sherlock repeated, "I need you."

They'd made it to the tops of the stairs now, and just stepped into the flat. 

John was still looking at Sherlock, his eyes large and desperate.

"I need you too."

 


End file.
